


all is right in the meadow

by acousticvegetables



Category: Dear Evan Hansen - Pasek & Paul/Levenson
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Connor Deserves Happiness, Connor Murphy Lives (Dear Evan Hansen), Evan Hansen Deserves Happiness, Falling In Love, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Panic Attacks, Recreational Drug Use, Slow Burn, Tree Bros, au where the characters in deh are allowed to be gay
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-19
Updated: 2018-12-02
Packaged: 2019-07-14 12:08:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 32
Words: 36,841
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16040168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acousticvegetables/pseuds/acousticvegetables
Summary: sometimes you just want to lie with your fellow, the one you'd love to die for.(for connor and evan, love is the word)





	1. “only man i love is my dad.” yeah, right.

**Author's Note:**

> Connor and Evan are my sweet boys, and I've been holding on to this fic for a while. Enjoy this nice story, I think it goes well with autumn, along with pumpkin spice scones and warm blankets.

Evan didn’t think much when Connor asked him to go for lunch together. He thought he was just making up for pushing him in the hallway earlier that morning. Or he was planning to kill him by getting him alone off campus. Either or. He had written his name on Evan’s cast, like he had already claimed him for the kill. Was that some kind of gang code? Was Connor Murphy in a gang?

“Hansen? You there? Do you want to go or not? ‘Cause your window is closing,” he said. 

“Y-yeah, yeah. I’ll go,” Evan said, voice small. He didn’t know why he agreed. He didn’t want to die at the hands of Connor Murphy. He’d...heard things. He didn’t know if they were true. But he believed them nonetheless. What else could he do? Jared told him that Connor Murphy came to school high and flipped off a teacher; that Connor Murphy crashed his car into a tree on purpose; that Connor Murphy went to a drug house and made out with two guys at once. Evan didn’t like to think about Connor Murphy liking boys. It made his skin itch. 

So Evan Hansen and his cast followed Connor Murphy’s scuffed boots out of the school and down the street in the cooling fall air. 

Connor pulled a cigarette out of his hoodie pocket, cupping his hand around his mouth to light it. “You don’t mind, right?” He asked, letting his hand fall to his side, the smoke billowing like a trail to the wind behind him. 

“No, it’s fine,” Evan replied. It wasn’t really fine, Evan didn’t want to get cancer as much as the next guy, but wasn’t going to be _that guy_ , you know?

“Cool.” Connor paused for a moment, then gestured to Evan’s pants. “You like khakis?”

“Uh, um, yeah, I guess.”

“It’s just - you wear them all the time, I was just wondering.” He had this smirk that filled his face. 

“You wear black jeans all the time, do you like them?” Evan asked. Then immediately regretted it. He’d done it. 

Then Connor started to laugh. “I knew you had it in you, Hansen. Look at you, making a joke.”

A silence followed. Silences always made Evan’s mind run a mile a minute. He worried when there was nothing to be said or be heard because every silence is awkward. “I-I didn’t think you smoked cigarettes,” Evan said, feeling the words hang in the air for moment, catching Connor off-guard. Evan always said stupid things when there were awkward silences. 

His eyes squinted a little, giving Evan another once-glance up and down. “I smoke, Hansen, They’re easier to get than joints, okay? Didn’t know you cared…”

“I don’t - I don’t care. Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize, it’s fucking dumb.”

Evan knew better than to apologize for that last sorry. He still didn’t trust that Connor wasn’t going to leave him bleeding out in a side alley. 

They walked, Connor leading the whole way, until they reached the burrito place that Evan only knew for its popularity amongst stoners at their school. Evan really didn’t see that coming, _did he_? With a subtle flick of the fingers, Connor stamped on the cigarette with the force of his worn black boots. A single trail of smoke floated up between them but Connor had already plucked the butt from the ground and opened the door, waving Evan inside.

Evan shook his head, not moving an inch. “No, you go first.”

He shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

Connor stepped up into the warm shop, feeling the rush of the heater inside the store. Evan had never noticed how tall Connor was until he had to hide behind him in line. 

When they got to the front, Connor ordered, speaking quietly to the cashier, throwing his hair behind his ears.

“What do you want? I’ll pay, don’t worry about it,” Connor said, digging his wallet out of his back pocket, a back pocket Evan half expected to have a chain hanging out of it. No chain. 

Evan couldn’t speak, his mouth was open, he knew that much. Nothing was coming out. So he stood there, gaping at the menu until Connor spoke for him: “He’ll get the same as me, but mild. And I’ll get a Sprite. Thanks.”

Connor shook his head, smirking a bit. So this was his game? Get him somewhere uncomfortable and watch him scramble for a laugh. Did _Connor Murphy_ know about his anxiety? Did Jared drop it in some stupid joke he made, off-hand? He would have hurt Jared if he could have. 

_What could he want?_ Evan thought. _He’d gotten him here and he paid for his food, even though Evan wasn’t all that hungry._ His throat felt lodged with something thick and mucousy, so he coughed a couple times. Nothing budged. _That was going to make it hard to eat and you know if you don’t eat you’re going to fall asleep in Bio and you can’t afford to sleep through Bio because if you do, you’re not going to understand the new material and you’re going to fail the test, and that means a below excellent mark in Bio, which he needed to get into college. Mom would be disappointed. She would c-_

Connor plopped himself down on the bench across from him, setting the tray down between them on the table. Silently, Connor took his burrito, tore off the wrapper, and put the Sprite directly in front of him, so it sort of barricaded them off from each other. Evan wasn’t sure if he was supposed to be offended. 

“So, what’s your deal, Evan Hansen?” He asked. 

“My-my deal?”

Connor took a bite out of his burrito and spoke muffled with food in his cheeks: “Yeah, your deal. You’re so quiet all the time, ordering just now was a challenge…”

“I have, uh, social anxiety disorder, so…”

Connor nodded, taking another sip of his Sprite. Evan liked that response, other people always acted (fake) sympathetic or (fake) worried or they asked about if he was getting help or something else intrusive like that. Connor just…didn’t care.

“How’d you break your arm?”

“I fell out of a tree.”

“A tree?”

“I like trees.”

“What kind of trees?”

“Any kind.”

Connor hummed in thought. “Any reason for that?”

There goes the scramble again, it’s like Evan can feel everything tangible roll away right when he goes to answer. “Uh, I think it has something to do with the, uh, orchard my mom used to take me to when I, um, was younger and… yeah - yeah, I think…”

“Okay,” Connor leaned forward. “Now’s your chance to ask me anything.”

“Ask you anything? What does th-?”

“Ask me anything about myself. Anything you’ve heard about me, any rumour, or…”

“Are you really gay?”

God, Evan. Why?

Connor chuckled. “Wow, you really love getting right to the point.”

Jesus, Evan. Now you’ve done it. 

Evan waved his hands like he could rid the question from the air with them. “Oh, uh, sorry if you don’t wanna, uh, talk about it. It’s personal, I get it, I get it, I’m s-”

“Calm down,” he said, then paused for a moment letting his eyes glaze over a bit. “That was probably insensitive. A lot of people probably tell you to calm down, don’t they?”

“Yeah, the ones I talk to.”

He slumped back, running exasperated hands through his hair. “I am gay though. Or, I don’t know, I like _people_. But gay fits for now.”

“Oh, cool.”

“Are you?”

“What?”

“Are you gay?” Connor smiled, up to something, maybe. Evan knew he was being annoying at this point. 

“Uh, I-I don’t. Um.” And then his breath slipped out from under him. He took a deep breath but that didn’t work so then he tried the breathing thing Dr. Sherman taught him where he imagined the candle out in front of him and he had to make the flame flicker but not go out. 

“Hey,” Connor called out to him. Their eyes met. The flame went out. “You don’t have to have some major life decision right here, right now. ‘I don’t know’ is a perfectly fine answer, a good answer, even.”

“Okay… then, I don’t know.”

“Perfect.” Connor picked up his Sprite, gesturing to Evan’s tray with it. “Now, eat your food. You don’t have an eating problem, do you?”

“No, well, actually, sometimes I-”

“Today - you don’t. The conversation is over, you don’t have to say anything. We’re just going to eat our lunch, then we’ll see where we’re at afterwards. Sound good?”

Evan cracked a smile, he had no idea if it was genuine. “Sounds… nice.”


	2. why wasn’t he in the computer lab? wouldn’t you like to know?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> recommended listening for this chapter is the whole of the 1975's self-titled album. 
> 
> or maybe it's the recommended listening for the whole fic.
> 
> it's the only thing angsty enough to contain the moodTM.

Zoe stopped him after the bell for their last class had rung out. With his head down, Connor made his way down to the busy hallway where his locker was. Such a shitty day. He hated first days. Every teacher knew him by this point, and they knew he skipped class but somehow got fantastic grades, which meant they always suspected him for cheating. Fantastic. And if the teacher didn’t know him, they knew Zoe and expected him to be just as cheaply cheery as she was. Again, fan-fucking-tastic. Why were there so many people in that goddamn hallway? Connor fumbled with his lock, pushing his combination in, and wanting to die more and more with every second that passed. There was some ninth grader chewing gum in his ear and another two throwing a basketball. If he got hit with something, more than one person’s face was going to end up a decal on the cement wall. Connor was seriously pissed. Just… so pissed. 

He was going to do it that day, he really was. He’d been planning it for weeks, picked this day because the first day of school was certain to push him over the metaphorical edge. Surprise, surprise, it did. He couldn’t take it much longer, getting home would be hard enough. But he could see in his mind exactly where the pills sat on the shelf and he could see the spot under the tree, deep in the woods behind his school, where he would lie down for the last time; hopefully they wouldn’t find him for some time. The year only gets shittier after the first day of school. One more year, his mom would tell him, the same thing that that therapist his mom made him see at the beginning of summer. _You can do one more year, Connor. Then you can do whatever you’d like, your grades are so good you could get into any college you applied to, I don’t know why you don’t try, Connor. You’re going to waste something any other kid would die for._ Yeah, well, Connor would die to be free of it all. His brain fucking hated him, trying to self-combust at any opportunity. He couldn’t think straight but he functioned like a fucking well-oiled machine when it came to school. Nothing made sense. So many last straws had come and gone and he was lying in his bed, angry tears drying on his cheeks and his hand throbbing after punching his closet door, he decided that this was it. He couldn’t take this anymore. Nothing worked. No one could talk him out of himself. Call him crazy, he didn’t mind. 

That morning and that whole day and everything he did was an odd swelling of nostalgia, knowing it was the last time he would be doing all this stuff. Everything is so much easier, but still so much harder when it’s the last time. 

Maybe that’s why he wanted to be nice that day, he didn’t yell at his mom when she spilt orange juice on his pants. Which is… _nice_? Not really. Was redemption even fucking possible? At his point? At any point?

_I’m going to die today I’m going to die today I’m going to die today I’m going to die today I’m going to die today I’m going to die today I’m going to die today I’m going to die today I’m going to die today I’m going to die today I’m going to die today I’m going to die today I’m going to die today I’m going to die today I’m going to die today I’m going to die today I’m going to die -_

Zoe’s voice felt loud from the inside of his head. “Hey, I saw you with that kid, Evan Hansen. The kid you pushed in the hallway before first period? What the hell?”

“I screwed up, Zoe. Just trying to make up for it,” Connor murmured. 

“And since when is that you? Just asking, because I thought you were the kind to just sort of cause conflict-”

“Just stay out of it, Zoe. None of your fucking business,” Connor ran a chaste hand through his hair. “Don’t you have some band practise to get to or something?”

“I’m going over to my friend’s house, so you’re going to have to take the car home.”

“Fine.”

“Cool, see you never.”

“Fuck you.”

“Fuck you!” Zoe stormed off, hefting her backpack over her shoulder. She didn’t really know or care where she was going as long as it was the opposite direction of Connor. Which worked just fine for Connor. 

The car meant he could go home whenever. Perfect. 

The only problem arose when Connor spun on the heels of his combat boots to find the vice-principal, Mr. Linn, standing right behind him. _Shit,_. He had this stink-face on, like Connor had directly compromised the sanctity of his school, which wouldn’t be that far off, to be honest. 

“Come with me.” Mr. Linn spoke his words carefully, like thinking through each part of that three-word sentence before it hit his tongue. 

There’s no use in fighting or lying, Connor’s been doing this since the second grade. He just shrugged. It’s not a glamorous walk through the main office to Mr. Linn’s little office. There are a million pictures of him with his wife and his kids, all smiling at a sports game or a pumpkin patch or in front of a famous landmark. Connor knew enough to know more than half of those photos were fake. There was at least one person in that photo that would much rather not be in it at all, rather than give a plastic smile. He wondered who it was, maybe one of his daughters that was always on the outer side of the frame. But he’d seen these pictures before. Mr. Linn wasn’t the best to meet with, the other vice-principal was much worse, but he was better than the principal herself. 

“Mr. Murphy!” Mr. Linn said. 

Connor jerked his head to attention. “Yeah, what?”

“Pay attention, young man. I don’t ask a lot during our conversations, but I do request that you at least pay attention.”

“‘Course, gotcha,” Connor said. 

Mr. Linn sighed, folding his hands on the portion of the desk that faced Connor. It was one of those L-shaped desks, where the computer was on the left side, next to the wall, and the spinny chair could reach the stuck-out part where you could meet with the people sitting in the uncomfortable, un-spinny office chairs. 

“I realise that you have problems with your relationship with your sister, Connor, but you must leave those arguments at home. Here, think of her as just another student, you don’t have to talk to her-”

“That works until she’s my ride home,” Connor spat. He almost rolled his eyes, but he knows how well that goes over. 

“Even in that case, Mr. Murphy, you still have to be civil with your sister. Once you leave school property, what you do becomes your parent’s responsibility. Zoe is a reasonable young lady, I don’t know her to instigate-”

“Yeah,” Connor scoffed, “until you have to live with her. Then she’ll come for you.”

“I can’t know what things are like outside of school, Mr. Murphy. What I can do is encourage you to be the better person…”

_Blah, blah, blah._

“...you should know that your parents have already expressed a concern before the year started. With your mental health-”

“My what?!” Connor shot up in his chair. “Who the fuck are they to be telling you people about my mental health? That’s bullshit.”

“ _Language_ , Mr. Murphy.”

Connor rolled his eyes for real that time. “Look, my parents don’t know shit about my mental health, okay? So that’s that. Don’t listen to what they say.”

Mr. Linn’s face kept stone calm, only tilting up to meet Connor. “Unfortunately, we have to. Until you are an adult, they have a say in your education and discussing your mental health, yes.”

Connor fell back in defeat, crossing his arms over his messenger bag that he put in his lap. “That’s bullshit.”

He stayed quiet. 

Mr. Linn sighed again. “Be it that or not, it’s the way things work.”

There was a silence for a long time, the heater kicked on in the meantime. Connor thought about how much he hated the phrase ‘it’s the way things work’. _Why? Why is that the way things are? Why don’t I have any say? Because I would argue I have some say in the way things work. Or I want to, at least. Is that so hard to ask? For a say in something that happens in my life? I didn’t have a say when they took me to a therapist or when they forced me into rehab or made me take those meds that made me nauseous all the time and gave him insomnia. I didn’t sleep for three weeks and I would argue that that’s not the way things have to work. But that’s what the doctor told him: ‘it’s the way these things work, every medication has its side effects, but we have to wait it out to see if the benefits outweigh the downsides’. His parents ate that up. ‘It’s the way things have to be for now.’ What bullshit. What complete and utter bull-_

Mr. Linn broke the silence with a clearing of his throat. “I’ll let you go, Mr. Murphy. I don’t think anything productive is going to come out of us meeting right now, but I want to see improvements. No more fighting with your sister and please try to show up to class on time. I want to meet again sometime soon to see how you’re doing.”

Connor flashed him a fake smile, cracking at the edges as he stood. “I’ll try my best, Mr. Linn.”

He looked up at Connor and his flippant sarcasm. “Goodbye, Mr. Murphy.”

That was enough. Connor ripped open the office door and stomped his boots all the way down the hall. He didn’t know where he was going. 

His whole body was on fire, his fists clenched; there were tiny half-moons on the heel of his hand. He needed to go somewhere private. Connor knew better. He couldn’t drive like this. Brain spinning and taking his vision along with it. He could have scratched every last bit of skin off of his body. 

Flying down the empty hallways, he busted open the door to the bathroom and ran into a stall. The lock took a minute of fiddling to get closed. This is worse than his actual locker. Everything was blurring his eyes, he had to grab the wall of the stall to stop himself from falling over. Was he crying? Nope. Nope. He can’t cry not here not now and certainly not here. Of course, this made Connor make a decision he’s not sure if he regretted but it definitely sucked. He did what he swore he would never do in middle school when he started all this: he pulled out a tiny razor, one that he’d tweezed out of a disposable razor head he’d stolen from Zoe. 

He wouldn’t cut a lot, he promised himself. He wouldn’t cut deep, he promised himself. He just needed to release this stress, that’s what he was doing. Nothing major. He just couldn’t live with… this inside of him. The main event was still to come, finding him dead in a bathroom stall at this godforsaken school wasn’t a pretty way to go out. The squeaking of his shoes in nervous twitches let him know he was alone. Cool. Great. 

Fine red lines and beads of blood popped up on his wrist; Connor always wondered why some of the beads were bigger than others, maybe it had something to do with pressure. He never went farther than having the beads come up, but he’d definitely broken skin and his whole arm blossomed in an angry pink. Puffy, mad pink. 

He couldn’t tell if it did anything, but his arm stung. So that was something. 

Shoving the blade back into its tiny pocket in his bag, Connor rolled down the sleeve on his jean jacket and did the other one just to match. It was cold anyways. That’s what he’d say if they asked. 

Because, as much as Connor Murphy did not give a fuck about other people and what they thought of his mental illness, he’ll never forget the bugged out eyeballs of the girl who happened to walk past him at ten to midnight while he was on a McDonald’s run and saw the smear of blood covering his entire forearm and the splattering of it on his chest. He was airing it out, alright? He didn’t mean to scare her so badly. Thank god she didn’t call the police. 

And maybe he was scared, too. There was also that. 

Of course, that had to be the moment he heard the door to the bathroom swing open and someone else walk inside. It irked him. He couldn’t stay there. He couldn’t risk it. As soon as the stall door closed, Connor nearly jumped out of his and made a beeline for the door. He didn’t look back. 

_What time is it? How long was I in there for?_ Connor thought. He flung his phone out of his back pocket and clicked the lock button so it displayed the time. An hour and a half had passed since the end of school. Jesus. Connor wasn’t sure where he lost the time, but it freaked him out enough: he needed to get out of the hellhole. 

Connor ran as fast as he could down the stairs, on his way to cut through the foyer to get out to the senior parking lot so he could get in his car and go home. Not that home was any better, but at least he could dissociate in relative peace. 

He nearly stomped into Hansen’s head, he almost didn’t notice he was sitting there on the steps. Connor weighed his options: he could pretend he didn’t see Evan and walk right past, because there was no way that Evan hadn’t heard him coming, or he could talk to him. There were a myriad of other options of course, but Connor wasn’t willing to flesh out all of them (except for maybe faking his own death, that sounded really good right now, he could just drop to the ground and trail some of the blood from his arm as if it came from his nose and then maybe Evan would think he’d had a brain aneurysm or something, a very viable option if things became dire). Well, if Connor was going to keep up the redemption thing, he’d have to talk to Evan, it was only fair. Maybe this was his sign. Doesn’t everybody get a sign? That maybe there’s something worth doing in their lives? He felt antsy. There had to be some reason he was sitting on these steps and not hanging out with douche-face Jared Kleinmen or sitting in the computer lab, looking at... trees or something? He was that kid that did his whole biology independent lab on trees, right? That’s what Zoe said. Why was he trusting Zoe so much? 

God, he just looked sad. Say something, Murphy. Man up and say something.


	3. come with me or be square

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> recommended listening for this chapter is the audiobook for plato's republic book II. 
> 
> no reason. 
> 
> just in case you have a spare hour and twelve minutes.

Evan hadn’t planned on spending his first hour after school sitting on the stairs waiting for Jared, but, alas, that’s the way it goes sometimes. The front foyer was empty, except for the occasional student council member or group of friends passing through. 

He was shaking thinking about missing him appointment with Dr Sherman. His mom paid a lot for those appointments, she didn’t pay for him to miss them. There was 1 hour and 34 minutes for him to get home, eat something, reread the letter a couple times in order to regret every word he wrote, and then walk to his office. And his window was dwindling. The piece of paper weighed a pound in his backpack. 

The clunking of two combat boots made him shiver and raise his hand to his mouth. Something inside of him sunk to the pit of his stomach.

“Hansen? What’re you still doing here?” Connor Murphy asked him. 

Evan stretched his head to see his shaded face behind a curtain of hair, as Connor peered down at where he was sitting. “I’m just waiting for Jared, h-he’s, uh, my ride home,” Evan choked out. 

He could feel his heartbeat picking up. 

“What a fucking dweeb is Jared?” He paused for a moment, letting the clicking of some teacher’s heels overtake the air in the foyer. She passed soon enough and they were left with silence. “You want a ride home? I’m just on my way out and I’m sure we live close enough. Besides, it’s not like I’m in any rush to get home.” Connor chuckled like he was telling some inside joke that only he understood. 

Evan could barely breathe from the silence that spanned his two questions, how was he supposed to answer? Connor Murphy was still _Connor Murphy_ that scared Evan out of his mind and, although he was given a chance at noon today, Evan still wasn’t sure that he wouldn’t go into a rage and kill him before dumping his body on the side of the road. What kind of car did _Connor Murphy_ drive? Was it a scrap yard junker that had keyed scratches down the side of its purple paint and skull stickers on its bumper? Would all of the lights work? How many accidents had _Connor Murphy_ been in? If he got into an accident and got hurt, his mom couldn’t pay for it and the stress would probably make her quit her night classes all because of him, their house would go into disrepair and his mom would regret ever having him because all he did was get hurt and cost them money. And if he died? His mom would never forgive him, scar her memories of him, and she’d go into debt to pay for his funeral. Funerals were expensive, Evan had looked into it over the summer. Would he survive a drive with _Connor Murphy_? In some ways, he hoped he did. And in the ways that made his insides crawl, he hoped he didn’t. 

“Earth to Hansen? God, you do this a lot, maybe that’s why you don’t have any friends. Is it a yes or a no?”

His butt was numb. And cold. And he wanted to be someplace else other than this awful school. “Um, uh, yea-yeah. Sure. I-I’d love a ride home.”

“Alright then, let’s go.” 

Connor walked fast. His legs were long, it made sense. But it really wasn’t helping Evan’s breathing. Which meant he was effectively out of breath by the time he stepped into Connor’s car, careful not to get any dirt on the mats. Because if he got dirt on the mats then Connor would be mad and he’d probably make him beat them out on the sidewalk or just get out and walk home. Which he was fine with. But there’s also the possibility that _Connor Murphy_ would go, as Jared described it, ‘batshit crazy’ on him and try to strangle him or something. 

There was no music playing when Connor turned the ignition, just some talk radio that Connor used a small dial to turn off before he put the car into drive. That shocked Evan, he’d expected _Connor Murphy_ to be into, don’t know, heavy metal or ska or punk or something like that, maybe hardcore rap, if he was one of those white boys. But there was only the wet sound of the tires against pavement as Connor sped away from their school.  
Evan clutched his backpack to his stomach for the ride. 

“What’s your address?” Connor asked. 

“Huh?"

“Your address. I need to know where I’m driving, Hansen.”

So Evan recited out the street name and number. Connor nodded and switched lanes. 

The silence was killing him. Could he actually die from awkward silences? Because sometimes it felt like he might. “No - no music?” He asked.

Connor glanced at him. “Uh, no. Don’t like it while I drive short distances, I pay better attention to turns and stuff when there’s nothing playing.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah….”

“Wha-what do you listen to?” Music-wise,” Evan said. God, of course he knew what he meant by ‘what do you listen to?’, he did not have to say ‘music-wise’. It was implied, Evan. Get better at this. 

“Usually folk music, sometimes some oldies or classic rock. What about you?”

“Oh, me? Just, ah, whatever plays on the radio. Or - or I liked Fall Out Boy and all that stuff from a while ago. I don’t listen to much music.”

Connor hummed. “Ever listen to Panic! At The Disco?”

“Uh, yeah?” Why did he say that? Whydidhesaythatwhydidhesaythat? He’s never listened to that band before - he wasn’t even sure if it was a band or something else. Now he’d given himself extra homework in looking them up and listening to an album or two. Jesus. Get it together, Evan. 

“Love them. So… got any other hobbies then?”

“Huh?”

“You mentioned you didn’t listen to music so I asked if you had another hobby.”

“Well, I already, uh, told you about the trees. I spent the summer working at, uh, the state park, where I got to teach people about the trees and spend a lot of time around them, so, yeah. Um, besides that, uh, I like to write like, stuff, not really anything in particular…. yeah.”

What Evan did not mention was that he hadn’t done a lot of writing in the past… couple years. He spent most of his free time worrying and overthinking things, he’d lose hours doing that, just sitting there, biting his nails into oblivion and letting some stupid thing overrun his mind. He was a mess most of the time. He didn’t really have any hobbies other than that. 

“Cool,” Connor said. “I used to do art a while ago, watercolour, sketching. I still sketch but I’ve been too busy floundering in front of SAT prep books that I haven’t had time to take out any paint.”

_Connor Murphy_ liked to… paint? Evan thought he would have listened to the heavy metal music while, he didn’t know what he thought, maybe wood carving or shattering glass bottles or doing drugs or planning a murder. He’d never given a second to think that he might like to _do things_ , Jared made him think he was a psychopath. _Do psychopaths have hobbies?_ They must, Evan thought. _Connor Murphy paints, does that make him not a psychopath or does that make him a creative psychopath? Are the two mutually exclusive?_

“What - what kind of stuff do you… sketch?” Evan asked. His voice felt too small. 

“Mostly things, I’m terrible at drawing people, can never get the proportions right. Nature is nice, like plants and ponds, when I get the chance those are my favourite.”  
Before he knew it, Connor was putting on his signal and pulling over in front of Evan’s house. It was smaller than Connor’s but the blue front door and vines growing over the railing of the porch were enticing, it felt like the outside of a home should. It should welcome you, and Evan’s house did. 

“This is it?” He asked. 

“Y-yeah, this is me.”

Evan shrunk thinking about Connor’s impression of his house. It was tiny, Evan knew that. The paint was chipping on almost everything, they didn’t even have a two-car garage. Connor’s house probably did. 

“Seeyoutomorrow,” said Evan, unbuckling his seatbelt and popping open the door, finally feeling how his fingers ached from clenching them for the whole ride home.  
“Wait -” Connor parked the car and lifted out of his seat to slip his phone out of his pocket. “Let me get your number, so that I can text you or you can text me if Jared the douchebag leaves you stranded again. I’ll give you mine, too.”

Evan swallowed. “O-okay, sure, yeah.”

He took his own phone from the pocket in his khakis and put into Connor’s hand; it was so small in Connor’s massive palm. And he typed with a grace that comes with long fingers. Evan was shaking so badly it made it hard to remember his number let alone put it into the phone, but he managed, though Connor had to wait a beat longer than Evan was comfortable with. 

“Thanks-s, for the ride and… everything,” stammered Evan. 

“Bye, Hansen. It’s really no problem.”

Evan got one last look at Connor’s eyes before he drove away, they were darker than before, full of something mysterious, something he was hiding from him. But, then again, what wasn’t Connor Murphy hiding from _everyone_. Evan was being silly and over analyzing situations again; Dr. Sherman had told him to stop doing that. 

There were a lot of things Dr. Sherman told him to stop doing. 

So he walked up his driveway and unlocked their front door, stepping into the empty home, and breathed for the first time in seven hours.


	4. did he run a red? run him over.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is a short chapter.
> 
> and for that i apologize.

“You got a different ride home today? I don’t see Jared’s Pizza Roll wrappers in the garbage,” Heidi said. 

Evan looked down at his disheveled fingernails and decided biting them right now would be premature; they’d already bled last night and they still stung. But he was glad his mom had given up on talking about what Dr Sherman said. “Uh, yeah. I did.”

“From who?”

“Co-Connor Murphy.”

“Zoe Murphy’s brother?”

Connor would’ve rolled his eyes at that. He could see him behind his mom right now, arms crossed and a sour face. 

“Yeah, him.”

“That’s funny. I’ve heard he’s not a very good kid. What made you go with him?”

He couldn’t stop his hands flying up to his ears where he could scratch there and it would remind him he was real. “He, uh, saw me sitting while waiting for Jared, except Jared left with one of his other friends, I think, so he offered to drive me home. He’s alright, I guess.”

Heidi sighed, flopping down next to Evan on the couch. “Well, that was nice of him. But don’t go and get too close to him, he does things I don’t want you anywhere near.”

“Right, Mom.”

“Now, I have an hour and a half until I have to leave for class. How does spaghetti and watching some _Murder, She Wrote_ sound?”

Evan let the smallest of smiles creep up on his mouth. “I’d like that.”

While his mom went into the kitchen and starting filling a pot with water to boil, Evan thought to send Connor a text. Sending the first text was a bold move for Evan, but Connor had initiated the number-giving, so he must have at least wanted contact with Evan. 

**Evan** : Thanks again for the ride today, I know it must have taken time out of your day. Sorry. 

Pressing send took a deep breath and closing his eyes. 

Connor replied almost immediately:

**Connor** : no problem, tree boy, wouldn’t want you getting picked up by the school shooter or anything

**Connor** : oh wait

**Connor** : sorry bad joke but it was my pleasure, hansen, anytime


	5. can’t commit, can he?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> still listening to the republic? 
> 
> me too. 
> 
> love u.

So Connor didn’t kill himself, if you can’t tell. 

One reason why: convenience.

His plans were foiled the moment he parked his car because his parent’s car came barrelling into the driveway at almost the same time. He gave that closed mouth, subtle smile and waved once at his mom and dad as they climbed out of the car.

“Did you get my text? Your dad was done early today at work, isn’t that wonderful, Connor?” Cynthia said. 

“Yeah, sure,” he replied, shoving his hands in his pockets.

No, actually, it isn’t wonderful, because if _something_ had been different he’d be dead right now, Cynthia. If Connor hadn’t been held back by Zoe or the principal or by his own damn self he could’ve been out of school sooner or he would have taken a different way out and he wouldn’t have run into Evan Hansen. Evan fucking Hansen, who’s house is eight minutes away from his. Eight fucking minutes. That could have been enough time to grab the pills and get back into the car and be gone forever, maybe he would have read the text from his mom that told him they were going to be home early. He wanted to punch something, maybe he would later, but he could have done a lot of things. Connor thinks about that all the time. In any moment, there are an infinite number of actions to be taken. Standing outside of his house, door being unlocked by his mom who can’t find the key on her keychain, Connor could run off down the street or take the car and drive off and he could buy drugs at the pharmacy that would kill him for sure. He could also attack his parents if he wanted, or run into the path of one of the cars that drove down their street, that his dad complained drove far too fast for a neighbourhood, or he could bang his head into the brick or scratch the skin off of his arms or burst into a flood of tears, or he could….

She finally got the door open and the familiar smell of herbs and warmed chicken stock soup hit him. For today, he’d have to go inside, do some kind of homework, eat dinner, try not to get too riled up when his dad picked a fight, then spend the evening in his room, wishing he could be anywhere else in the world while feeling like he might burst into flames from the way his insides boiled. Everyone would yell at him, be disappointed in him, but that would have to be enough for today. He could kill himself next week.

He got a text from Evan:

**Evan** : Thanks again for the ride today, I know it must have taken time out of your day. Sorry. 

That made him chuckle. Why did it seem so Evan Hansen to end a ‘thank you’ text with ‘sorry’? ‘Taken time out of his day’? Yeah, no kidding. Just enough to make it impossible to do what he wanted to do. He wondered if that dweeby guy would ever know what he’d done for him. 

Connor shot back a response quickly while kicking off his boots and shrugging off his jacket. 

Another day, Murphy. Just you wait.


	6. that boy is legs, legs, legs

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> smash bros. club is scary.
> 
> take it from an expert.

He could see Connor coming down the hallway, head down and hair sectioning out his face. 

“Oh my god, is that _Connor Murphy_ coming towards us? Duck and cover, guys, he might have a gun in his hoodie pocket,” Jared mocked.

“Shut up,” Evan said. The words jutted out before he could stop them.

“Whoa, what? Do you have something riding on Crazy Connor that I don’t know about?”

“I-I just don’t like how you make fun of people, Jared.”

“How chivalrous of you,” he said.

“Shut up.” Evan could usually put up with Jared’s shit because he was a pretty good friend besides that. Well, a decent friend. Or at least alright. 

Evan shrugged his backpack farther onto his shoulder and put his eyes somewhere other than down the hall until Connor’s legs were right in front of his  
“Earth to Hansen? You there?” Connor asked. 

“Yeah.” Evan swallowed so hard his throat went dry. 

“Then why aren’t you looking at me?”

Evan hated this situation. Where, if he looked up he’d be giving in to Connor’s teasing question, but if he kept staring at his feet he’d look rude beyond belief. The options made his palms sweat. Connor made his palms sweat. But, then again, most things made his palms sweat. 

He decided to look up. 

“That’s better,’ he said, Connor’s thin eyebrows bending up and his lips almost pulling to a smile, But his eyes caught Jared standing right there and his face stayed cold. “Did you want a ride after school today?” He asked. 

“Uh…” Evan looked at Jared, who just shrugged, stunned. “T-that’d be… nice, yeah.”

“Cool, meet you at the same place as last time?” 

“Yeah, okay,” Evan said, chest filling with something that felt like acid reflux but affected him like the nervousness of being asked to order at a restaurant without the proper time to rehearse and go through the five stages of grief. Something came up and stuffed his chest. He wanted to cough. But he knew Jared would say that he was trying to rid himself of the gay through bodily expulsion and now his snot would be gay. This was serious, Jared said some stupid stuff. 

“See you then,” Connor said and shoved his hands through his hair, merging into the traffic flow of the hallway. 

“Oh my god, you’re getting rides from _Connor Murphy_? What, are you sucking his dick instead of paying gas money? Because I think I could offer you a better deal,” Jared  
“I’m not,” Evan swallowed hard, “ _sucking his dick_. He just offered because he lives nearby and saw that you left me waiting on Friday.” 

Jared scoffed. “I did not leave you waiting, you knew I had an emergency Smash Bros. Club meeting. You could’ve joined me.”

Evan was not going to be joining the Smash Bros. Club, it was loud and there was a lot of yelling by people he didn’t know. Sitting on the stairs and reading was much more appealing, even if it made him legs and butt numb. But Evan had the premonition that that was a sentence he could hold over Jared’s head for a while, he would’ve snickered to his friends he if was passing by and heard that. 

If he had friends… and didn’t know Jared. He was nice but Evan would take _any other friends_ other than Jared. If he had the choice. But you don’t really pick your friends, they pick you, a lot like a nose or a wedgie. Okay, gross. Sorry ‘bout that. 

But maybe Jared wasn’t that nice, he didn’t even really try to understand Evan’s anxiety and put him in awful situations all the time, like being forced into taking rides from _Connor Murphy_ and not making sure he could eat at night, like surely a real friend would check up on Evan and _know_ that he was home alone and if his mom didn’t leave something frozen for him to eat that he wasn’t going to be ordering dinner himself, like surely they would know that. Jared… didn’t. He just didn’t. 

“Whatever, but Connor offered so I took him up on it. He’s not that bad,” Evan said.

“Really? Really, Evan? God, you just sound so… desperate these days. Not a good look for you.”

“Shut up.”


	7. fly me away, ol’ brown eyes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> connor is definitely an art hoe. 
> 
> there's really nothing anyone can do about it.

Connor slammed the car door shut, shaking the old car’s creaky frame. “I was thinking we could do something before I dropped you off, if you have the time.”

“Where-where were you planning on going?” Evan asked. 

“I don’t know.” Connor sort of gazed out the front windshield and out at the student parking lot like there was a deer out there and he was entranced trying not to spook it. “I just don’t want to go home right now, but if you want to, I’ll drop you off.”

“No, no,” Evan sputtered, hasty to get the words out. “I want to do something.”

“Perfect…I’ll just drive until we figure out where to go. But let’s just start with the other side of town.” 

Connor shifted the car into drive, rolling forward and out of the parking lot. He turned left and stepped on the gas to get as far down the street as he could before slamming the brakes at the stop light. 

“Is everything o-okay?” Evan asked. 

“Why do you ask?” Connor had this smirk on his face like he knew more than he wanted to. 

Evan tossed this over in his head. How mad would Connor be if he kept this conversation going? He liked talking about his problems, it helped him make sense of them, but maybe Connor would take it as an invasion of privacy. He seemed… on edge, all of the time. He was still kind of afraid of what Connor’s mind could do, he still didn’t know if the thing about the drug house was true or all the weed he smoked. Where did he keep the weed? Was it in the car? In the seat cushions? Was he sitting on weed? What if hanging out with Connor and sitting in his car made him smell like weed, and his mom smelling the reek of weed on his clothes would ground him for the next month or year or decade?

“You just… just, uh, seem a little upset.”

“You could say that,” he said, cooly calm. 

“What happened? If you don’t mind, uh, mind me asking. If you don’t want to talk about it, that’s fine too, I don’t care I-”

“It’s chill,” Connor said, eyes not moving from the road in front of him. “I, uh… my dad got pissed at me this morning for being high at breakfast and then taking the last of the coffee in the pot. He was kind of... pissed anyways because I’m always doing some stupid shit that he can yell at me for. This time made me kind of mad, though, ‘cause he told me to fuck off for as long as I could or I’d end up at my Grandma’s over Christmas Break this year. Which would be really shitty, trust me. It’s my mom’s mom, so she still thinks I’m like eleven and like Star Wars and have crushes on girls. It’s an uncomfortable two weeks, let me tell you.”

HIs hand moved fluidly over the steering wheel as he turned into parking lot of an art supply store.The other hand laid nearly limp in his lap, except for the thumb picking at the hem of the hoodie. “I promise we’re going somewhere more exciting, I just need supplies first.”

“Art supplies?” asked Evan. 

“Fuck yeah, art supplies.” His seatbelt flung back and hit the side of the car with a thump. “Are you coming or not?”

So Even hopped out of the car, feet bouncing in his sneakers.

Connor said hello to the man behind the counter, answering a couple pleasantries about his mom or something, before sauntering to the back of the store where the paper was kept. The store was crowded and filled with the scent of dried paint and something like fresh wood, except stained with acid. 

“W-what are we looking for?” whispered Evan.

Connor didn’t answer right away, already scanning the shelves and looking at price tags. He didn’t even register that Evan had said anything until Connor stopped at the sketchbooks. “Uh, I’m - we’re - looking for a new sketchbook. And maybe some pencils.”

“What for?”

“Sketching? What do you think they’re for?” Connor asked, hushing his deep voice so it sounded rough. “Sorry, that was mean. I just… need new ones.”

“O-okay. Cool. Sure,” Evan said. 

So Connor flipped through some big sketchbooks, sometimes smaller ones, finally deciding on one with a black cover. It was about the size of a piece of printer paper. “I’m gonna need something to do tonight while ignoring my family and their incessant yelling, Hansen,” Connor offered as an explanation, still turning the book over in his hands. 

Evan just nodded, not quite sure what to offer in consolation. Connor was confusing. Or maybe _Connor Murphy_ was more confusing.

After walking through a couple more racks of pencils, Connor grabbed a small pack of charcoal ones and brought everything up to the register. The crumpled money from his pocket looked about as shabby as the rest of Connor. Evan only now noted the fraying edges of that hoodie. 

“I’m making a change in my life, Hansen. Pushing you to the ground was, believe it or not, a real low in my life. The lowest, maybe. I realized I needed to stop treating everyone around me like shit because it sure as hell was not making me feel any better. Now, deciding this is not the challenge, Hansen, there’s mental shit I need to work through and a therapist to work on anger management with, but it’s a start. A fresh start. And for every fresh start, there needs to be a fresh sketchbook.”

Evan gulped as Connor seemed out of breath. He had no idea _Connor Murphy_ could be that deep. That was some serious art hoe muttering. 

“So… where’s the best place to look at trees?” Connor asked. 

“The-the best place?” Evan felt whiplash from the change in subject. 

“I figured you’d know, acorn boy.”

Evan felt the pink heat of a blush in his cheeks. “Uh, well, there’s not really one place that’s the best, it, uh, depends on what you’re looking for.”

“Tall ones. Wait… where have the leaves started to change colour?”

“That’d be Monarch Woods on the east side of town.”

“Monarch it is, then,” he said, rolling the car forward once more. 

Evan was pretty convinced that Connor did not want to kill him at this point, unless it was some elaborate plan that involved befriending him and earning his trust before killing him in an emotional rampage, and he would go uncaught because the friendship was so new that there would be no evidence that they were ever friends unless Connor faked something, like backdating emails that the two of them sent to each other, proving they were friends. Weird. He really wished that wasn’t what he was plotting. 

The ride was nice enough, if it were only the two of them, not Connor, Evan, and Evan’s insatiable anxiety about having to say something. That one never shut up. He could tell himself what Dr. Sherman always told him; that he didn’t have a responsibility to fill silence, even if it made him unbelievably uncomfortable; that he didn’t have to be interesting or entertaining all the time because no one really was; that awkwardness is part of a conversation because life isn’t a movie, Evan, you should know better at this point. Dr. Sherman would say that Connor was probably more worried about himself than Evan because that’s the way things worked - everyone else was more concerned with their own problems. 

He didn’t know how Connor knew where Monarch Woods was, but he drove there in record time, only cutting a couple corners and nearly putting the car up on the curb while parking. The air became brisker to welcome them as clouds moved in a blotched out the sun. 

“Come on.” He gestured towards the trail that was overtaken by trees, and Connor’s boots crunched the gravel with gritty authority. They walked and walked and walked and didn’t talk until they made it up to the top of the small hill in the woods that sat itself above the swampy pond, trees cascading down until they collapsed into the water. Not many leaves blanketed the ground yet and if you glanced up, the blue grey sky was blotted with the darkness of leaves as they searched for light. 

That was Evan’s favourite things, or one of his favourite things because he couldn’t choose, was the way that trees tried so hard to survive and fight for light that they would bend around other trees or just keep growing taller and taller so they reached above other trees, which was a positive feedback loop because the more sunlight that hit the leaves, the taller the tree could grow so it would keep reaching for more light. The underbrush that grew around the trunks sufficed with what they got and stopped vying for top spot, they were destined to be short and small and dark because that’s the lot they got in the ecosystem. Evan felt a lot like those shrubs or patches of moss or sprouts of tiny clusters of leaves. Maybe he was meant to stop trying, stop trying to find the light at the top because he was never going to be tall enough. People like him had been trying for long enough and nothing had changed, no one was ever going to get to the bright openness where the sunlight warmed you in something glorious. He had followed Connor here and he was as low as Evan was. Which meant Evan was even lower than him. Which hit like a blast of ice, like when you open a freezer, and it shocks you but you were expecting it, which made him feel small and ridiculous. 

But now he was talking badly of Connor, which would totally get him killed if Evan’s worst nightmare of saying what you’re thinking out loud without knowing that you’re saying it out loud, was realized. Was saying something bad the same thing as telling the truth? Because it was true, Connor was no quarterback or first chair violin, and neither was Evan. He was deciding when Connor lied down on the grass next to him. 

“W-what are you doing?” asked Evan.

“What does it look like? I’m… looking at the clouds.” He folded his hands on his stomach. “Join me.”

Evan swallowed the conversation he’d have with his mom later about why his khakis were covered in grass-stains and mud, and took his place next to Connor’s warm body. 

“What do you want to do when you get out of here?” Connor asked. 

And thank god he started the conversation. 

“Uh, I don’t know, I guess.” Evan shrugged, the grass parting for him and his shoulders. 

“I mean, I’m assuming you don’t want to spend the rest of your life wasting away in this hell of a suburbia, so what do you want to do when you’re allowed to leave? There has to be something you have in mind, I won’t judge, I won’t tell you to be more realistic, I just want to know.”

What did Evan want to do? Well, he’d need money first, that was the main thing he was thinking about. College costed money, apartments costed money, new clothes for job interviews costed money and definitely more than whatever his mom had saved away. He’d be in debt for the rest of his life, so that’s what Evan was thinking about.  
“I’d need money before I can do anything,” he blurted. 

“Right, but like if money were no object - your college and rent and food is paid for - what are you studying? Or learning, or whatever?”

Huh. Evan didn’t really know how to think like that. Because anytime he imagined college, he imagined the stress of having to work and the stress of having a roommate or several roommates or even living on a floor with people he didn’t know where he’d have to talk to more than one person before even going to the bathroom in the morning. So many opportunities to screw it up. But Evan had decided a long time ago that if he was going to do anything, it would have to strike him the way nature did, with undying intrigue. 

“I - I guess then I’d like to study the environment, something like environment science or biology or - or… yeah. I don’t know. What - what, uh, what about you?” Connor sighed so deeply his chest rose up farther than Evan thought was possible. “I don’t really know either. The future seems impossible to me, like I’m on a track with a bunch or hurdles in front of me and the future is at the finish line, but I’m a terrible athlete and a terrible runner so I feel weak before I’ve even taken the first step… do you get that sometimes?”

“Uh… yeah, sometimes, yeah.”

Tell the truth for once, Evan. Jeez. Even though Evan _did_ kind of get what he was saying, it felt like a sham to say it out loud.

The pause was heavy until Connor lifted his arms into the air, grasping at something above him. His hoodie sleeves were bunched up at his elbows and the air sucked everything out of Evan’s lungs when he saw them. Immediately he knew what they were, he’d been on the Internet enough to know what cutting marks looked like, but he’d never seen them in the flesh, on someone he knew. His heart started racing away from him, but he knew that a) freaking out about it was not going to do _anything_ helpful, even remotely and b) Connor probably wanted him to ignore them, it’s not like Evan was a doctor or a therapist or his parents that could help him out. They were even really friends. They were… acquaintances? More? Less? It was all very confusing and the words tumbled out of Evan’s mouth because the silence was kind of eating him alive and Dr. Sherman told him that being curious wasn’t a bad thing but maybe this was a bad thing to be curious about, he didn’t know until he was asking Connor: “Wh-what are those? On your arm?”

He could have bitten his whole hand off in retaliation. 

“Oh.” Connor quickly shoved his sleeves back down. “Nothing, nothing, I - I’m n-”

“Because if you want to talk about it, I won’t judge.” Evan’s voice shrunk so tiny, it could have been carried away in the wind. 

“I said it was nothing, Hansen. What is there to talk about?”

“I - I don’t know, sorry.” But Evan just had to whisper: “It’s just that usually a person who does something like that needs someone to talk to because it’s not healthy and can indicate other mental issues.”

Oh, if lightning could have shot him out of this plane of existence. 

“What did you say, Hansen?” Connor’s yells were almost lost in the wind, which had definitely picked up, sending shivers through Evan’s whole body. He jumped off of the ground, leaving Evan cowering, still sitting on the damp grass. “What the fuck did you say about me? You have no right! This is my fucking deal, Hansen, so you can shut the fuck up! Fuck, I never should - I never should have - have -”

He was not shivering in fear, definitely not. 

Connor ran over and, with his fist loosely put together, collided it with a tree trunk in a passion. “Jesus! Fuck! I hate this - fuck! I hate myself!”

Evan didn’t know what to say, he didn’t want to say the wrong thing because everything was the wrong thing. Nothing, he knew, would calm Connor down, everything seemed like it would just make him angrier. No water for the fire, only fuel. 

So Evan kept his muscles locked in shock.

Connor threw himself back into the grass. “Do you ever hate yourself, Hansen? Evan?”

“Y-yeah, sometimes.”

“But never this badly?”

“I guess not, I’ve never punched something, but I don’t-”

“I meant the cutting, Hansen. You’ve never cut yourself? Hurt yourself on purpose?”

Evan shook his head slowly. 

“I’m fucking crazy, Evan Hansen, that’s what you have to realize, the rumors are fucking true and all those bastards kids know it by now. I cope by putting a razor or a burning cigarette into my arm because - because…. I don’t know… how else to do it.”

He sounded… sad to Evan. Not angry, just… sad. 

_Connor Murphy_ wasn’t going to cry in front of him. Connor hated the way crying felt: the hot tears on his cheeks, the rotten curdling of his insides, the way his face ached in defeat afterwards. 

“It’s - it’s okay, Connor. We all have our ways, I guess. I tic and you cut. N-neither is healthy, but it’s what you have to do, I mean you’re not going to stop because I told you to. Of course, medication is always helpful in… in my experience. I’m not your parents, though, I can’t-”

Connor curled his legs into his chest and tucked his head into his knees, speaking to Evan from his mouth beside his knees.“My parents don’t even lecture me about it anymore, Hansen. That’s what you’ve got wrong. My parents don’t give two shits about me but somehow I’m still their ‘primary concern’ and a ‘burden’ on the family, no matter how much my mom pretends to care. They’d still be better off without me, especially Zoe. I’m such an asshole…”

What does one say to that? _What am I supposed to say to that?_ thought Evan. It’s not true, no one would be better off with their son dead (Evan had dedicated a lot of time to that thought over the summer but he could never quite prove his hypothesis). 

He decided that nothing would have to do. He wasn’t going to say anything. 

“I won’t tell anyone,” Evan whispered. “And I don’t think you’re an asshole.”

The wind had died down, leaving the warm air to float around them in a blanket of reprieve. 

“Thanks,” Connor replied. There were clean lines of tear tracks down his cheeks. 

Evan wouldn’t say anything about those, either.


	8. getting new meds because that’s important

Connor, in the halcyon period of the morning after and the morning prior, had forgotten all about the doctor’s appointment his mom had made for him with the psychopharmacist. 

He needed new meds, that wasn’t up for discussion in the Murphy household. The old ones made him feel like shit. Connor feared that anything new the doctors could concoct wouldn’t be any better. 

But Connor wasn’t going to make a fuss. He wasn’t a kid, he could handle himself. And he needed to make it up to Cynthia. He had made scene enough the night before when they all asked him where he’d been. Not like he hadn’t spent two hours hotboxing his car in the grocery store parking lot down the street from Evan’s house. He drank some Red Bull and felt just pissed off enough to come home, smelling a bit shit and ready to flip off anyone. Good times, good times. 

But Evan _had_ said something about medication. It worked for him. Shit, why was he trusting Evan so much with this? That kid was just as fucked as he was. Whatever, nothing made any fucking sense inside his head. 

Step One. The turning point, remember, Connor?

He didn’t protest when she told him to get his boots on and get in the car, even when she smiled that nice smile. Cynthia had on some country pop, Shania Twain maybe? Every song kind of blurred into the next and nothing in any of the songs made sense.

He knew the doctor would recommend a therapist for Connor after he recounted his symptoms and side effects with the old meds he was on, it was a dance of a sort. Connor knew a therapist would probably help, but he knew the appointments were too expensive for him to sit there and not say anything. He wasn’t ready, no matter how much Larry insisted there was no such thing as ‘not being ready’ to talk to someone. Larry would tell him to ‘man up’ even though those words were overcooked oatmeal in Connor’s ears and mouth; he felt ridiculous even thinking that. But his father’s stern voice sometimes helped him snap into it. Might have been the fear. Probably the fear. Or anger. 

The car ride was faster than he remembered. 

“We’re here,” Cynthia announced. “Better unbuckle your seatbelt, sweetie.”

Connor just shrugged. If he moved the tears in his eyes might have stumbled and fallen, so he couldn’t get out of the car. He just couldn’t. 

Cynthia gave him her sad smile and placed her hand over his on the seat, he didn’t flinch away like he usually did (it never stopped his mom from trying). “I know you don’t like these appointments, but we have to keep trying, Connor. It’s the only way things will get better.”

“I know,” Connor murmured. 

His nose twisted and he had to cough to cover the sound of his sob. Tears fell. Just a few and he took the ends of his hoodie sleeves to wipe them with a fireceness that left his cheeks a rage of red. Who was he? He hadn’t cried in front of his mom since he was eight. 

“It’ll be okay, baby. We’re going to try something new and if that doesn’t work we’ll try again. You’ll get better, I promise, we’ll find what works for you.”

Connor thought that what would work might have been him not existing at all. That sure worked for him. And everyone he knew. 

But he still had to walk into the yellow doctor’s office like everything was just fine, there were a couple people sitting in those uniform waiting room chairs with no padding, reading a magazine or scrolling through their phones. One woman sat with her baby on her lap, couldn’t have been more than a year or a year and a bit - Connor wasn’t very good at telling the ages of children, he hadn’t been around a lot of them. 

They registered at the desk with a man that looked reasonably tired at his desk. Connor slipped out his own phone when they picked a spot in the corner and sent a text to Evan:

**Connor** : going to get new meds upon your advice yesterday to stop being so unhealthy in my coping

**Connor** : pray that they don’t make me piss blue or something

**Connor** : you know what they’re like

He smirked thinking about Evan reading that, he hoped he would find it funny. That kid worried way too much as it was. Social. Anxiety. Disorder. Connor. Don’t be dumb. He can’t help it.  
Cynthia was a second out from asking Connor who was making him smile on his phone, but a nurse came through the big green door, dressed all in ill-fitting scrubs, calling for a Murphy, Connor (“or, uh, Connor Murphy”). Connor noticed that they were one of the last ones to arrive but the first ones called. Did they have his name starred as a top concern? Were the other people just seeing another doctor. He, swearing to god, hoped it was the second one. He was going to punch someone if the former was the case. 

The examination room was cold and the table was even colder, which was not good for Connor’s bony legs that all but turned into fucking icicles while they waited for the doctor to join them. 

“Mr. Murphy?” She asked when she came into the room, shutting the door quietly behind her. 

Connor nodded, grunting slightly. 

“I’m Dr. Brown. I don’t think we’ve met before, but I’ll be working with you in getting you a medication that works for you.” She leaned up against the counter to the side, flipping through a couple sheets on a clipboard, cleared her throat, and continued: “It’s written here that your last medication gave you some pretty bad side effects, would you mind sharing what they were?”

“Don’t you have it written down?” Connor asked. His mom shot him a deadly look from beside the table. He couldn’t see it so much as feel it. 

“Some of it, but I’d like the full story from you,” she replied, calmly.

So Connor digged deep in his memories about the nausea and the sleepless nights he had with the medication, stopping to cough every once and awhile. He hated talking about himself. No one hated it more than him. Except maybe Evan. Thinking about Evan made it better. 

Reel yourself in, Murphy. Evan doesn’t want a monster like you, not as a friend, not as… anything. 

Dr. Brown took down some notes, her pen flying across the page with his chart on it. Connor left out that the sleeplessness made it easier for him to sneak out and made him sleep in class when he was supposed to be paying attention and made him lose ten percent on his English essay because he had his head down when he was supposed to be learning about the themes in Othello.  
When he trailed off awkwardly, she kept writing. 

“I hate to ask,” Dr. Brown smirked. “Was there any changes to your libido or sexual interest?”

Connor, of course, blushed. “No.”

He didn’t want to elaborate.

“Any weight gain or loss?"

“No, not really.”

But his mom interjected: “He actually has lost some weight from this time last year, his shirts don't fit the same. He’s been eating less.”

“Have there been any changes to your appetite or food intake?”

“Yeah, uh, I couldn’t eat all the time, with the nausea and stuff.”

Dr. Brown just nodded and gave a couple last swipes of her pen before holding the paper out in front to admire her work. 

“Okay, we’ve got that done. Now, tell me about what’s going on for you right now - you’ve stopped taking the old medication right?”

Connor nodded. 

“So, what are your symptoms?”

“I, um, I feel numb most of the time, unless I get angry and then I get, like, really angry like I won’t feel anything other than anger in that moment. Little things set me off, I know that. Otherwise, I have the disinterest in activities and general sadness and all the other common symptoms of depression. I’ve had those since I was a kid, same with the anger stuff.”

“Any suicidal thoughts?”

God, it was going to kill his mom to hear the answer.

Connor shrugged, trying to dampen the blow. “Yeah, sometimes.”

“You do know that if you feel suicidal you should reach out for medical help, right? You can call a hotline or this office, we have a directory system that will have you talking to someone any time of the day. You can even call 911 if it becomes an emergency and you feel like you might hurt yourself, or show up at the emergency department and they can help you there.”

“I know.”

This doctor was really good at looking interested in what he was saying, at least she was trying to help. 

She jotted down a couple more notes, then circled a couple things and read it over. “I’ll be right back, I’m going to get this looked over by a colleague and come back to you in a moment.”

And, just like that, she disappeared as fast as she appeared. 

“Connor,” his mom whispered into the whirring of the computer that filled the room, “you could have told me if you were feeling that way. You can tell me anything, sweetheart.”

“I know, Mom.”

Connor sat there, wallowing in his own hatred for a while. He hated making his mom feel like that. Why did he always do this? He always made people feel awful. God.

The door creaked open. 

“So, I’ve decided to put you on Sertraline, which you might know as Zoloft. You were on Fluvoxamine before, the name Faverin might sound familiar.” She put the clipboard down with a harsh clack and sat in the chair at the desk, folding her hands in her lap. “Now, there are still side effects of Sertraline like diarrhea, nausea, and sexual dysfunction, but the nausea should go away after the first two weeks and most people don’t experience much in weight fluctuations on it. I should warn you that, like with any SSRI, there is a risk of suicidal ideation and behaviour. This is a minor risk and that side effect is not at all common, but is still important, especially for young people on these kinds of medications. I think that this medication will be good for you with your history with Fluvoxamine and other medications.

“I’ll get that into the system for you and, Ms. Murphy, you can speak with the receptionist about insurance information and all that, but it looks like you shouldn’t have any problems.”

Dr. Brown typed furiously into the computer and Connor could see the bars of a database reflected in her square-frame glasses. 

It was weird that he just… had to take this medication now. No one asked him if he was okay with the side effects. He didn’t want to feel suicidal, no one realizes how awful it is. He didn’t want to think like that. The world is ending and you can only lie there, letting the water and the ash and the rocks bury your still-breathing body. Nothing will end it unless you do. 

Her voice was incredibly jarring in the intermediate silence. “Alright, Connor, I hope this round works out for you. It can be a trial to get these things figured out, but I guarantee that something will help and if this isn’t it, come back and see me.”

“Thank you,” Connor mumbled. 

Cynthia shook her hand and they exchanged some pleasantries before Dr. Brown had to leave. Connor jumped off the table and followed his mom out into the waiting area, where she got the information sheet on the medication and sorted out some stuff about money with the same tired dude. Connor felt bad for him. 

Cynthia grabbed his hand and squeezed it as they walked out to the car in the changing evening air. “You were so brave in there, Connor. I’m proud of you.”

That was new. 

“Thanks, Mom.”

* * *

Evan had texted Connor back while he was in with the doctor:

**Evan** : I sure hope you don’t end up pissing blue, but you might get to throw up some more, which is fun.

**Evan** : Better invest in some good hair elastics or I’ll have to hold back your hair. 

**Evan** : Which I wouldn’t mind, anything for my friend <3

Huh. Friend. 

That Evan Hansen, for a guy riddled with anxiety he really knew how to charm the pants off of one Connor Murphy. Jeez.


	9. and you just wanna take me home (nananananana, like the one direction song)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yes, I capitalized pizza pops in this chapter. 
> 
> it is a proper noun. 
> 
> Pizza Pops.
> 
> I have no clue if they're just a canadian thing but we're using our fiction goggles to imagine they're not, cause I'm way too far into my deal with pizza pops that I can't be bothered to google. 
> 
> the mystery is far better.

The reasons why Connor insisted on going to Evan’s house were many and obvious. Cynthia had Connor on her last nerves; she could take a lot from him, but she didn’t like weed in her house and there was no hiding the haze in Connor’s room when she woke him up for school after an hour’s sleep - he was still wearing his clothes from the day before. There was no hiding that. He had gotten up, brushed his teeth, and ran out the door with enough time to make the cold walk to school. Zoe had left the house who knows how much earlier than Connor even got up and he was her ride for the day. But lately someone else had been giving Zoe rides and so around lunch time, Zoe would find Connor sitting alone and drop the keys into his hand. Which let him drive Evan home for the fourth time that week. And it was Thursday. 

“If - if you wanna come over, I mean, my house is kinda small and we don’t - there isn’t much - and my mom isn’t home and -”

“It sounds perfect, Hansen. Sounds a lot better than my house right now.”

So Connor pulled into the driveway instead of just stopping on the side of the street. 

Oh, God, Evan could have thrown up. He didn’t want Connor to see the shabby state of the front porch where the paint was chipping away and it was awful blue paint, too. Gross. And his house wasn’t very big either and much too close to the neighbours, it was unfortunate. Evan was shrinking into the poor little poor boy while unbuckling his seatbelt and unlatching the handle of the car. 

Connor didn’t seem to react much, but then he never really reacted much to begin with. Maybe his reaction would be magical or dangerous. But, then again, it would probably be the latter, knowing _Connor Murphy_ and all. 

Even jamming the door open because the lock always stuck, like he always did, made sweat build up on the back of Evan’s neck, and goosebumps attack at his thighs. But Connor, following his normal routine, dumped his bag on the ground and kicked his boots off right beside it, scrolling away at something on his phone until Evan led him into the kitchen. 

“So…” Evan choked back a bit at his words. “This is it. You can look through the fridge or whatever, if there’s something you want to eat. There’s not much but….”

Connor beat him to it, exclaining an abrupt “Holy shit!” while rifling through the freezer. “Pizza Pops!”

“Yeah, Jared loves those,” Evan said. “Or really anything pizza.”

Connor held the package out in front of his face, reading the instructions whilst letting the freezer door slide shut behind him. “Screw Jared, I’m eating it. I fucking called it and he’s not even here to call dibs.”

“We don’t have to ‘screw Jared’, we can always get more Pizza Pops.”

“That is a luxury you are taking for granted, Hansen. My mom wouldn’t let anything as highly caloric or so low in nutrition to ever take a place in her freezer.”  
Evan laughed. “Is your mom really like that?”

“I’m dramatizing, like any good storyteller, Hansen, but she’s theoretically that bad.”

The Pizza Pops went in the microwave and the timer was started, and in that precious silence before the jarring beeps of the machine, Connor took a second to appreciate Evan’s house. 

It always felt strange, or patronizing to call a home ‘quaint’. But it was true about this house, not that he’d ever tell Evan that or even mention it to anyone, but he was in awe of the life in this house, it’s its kitchen and in the walls there. The wall colour had probably been added recently, in lieu of wallpaper, but there was evidence that someone _lived_ there. Connor always thought that the slim, translucent backsplash in his kitchen at home was clinical, like something you would find at a dentist’s office. Evan’s kitchen had a bulletin board with a Phys. Ed. progress report that must have been from ninth grade, along with pictures of him and his mom from past birthdays and graduations. Old cards hung by one thumbtack, weathered from years of steam and kitchen smoke, but there were new cards too, wishing a happy birthday to a grandson, with ribbon glued across the front still intact. It was comfortable in here, like someone would be like to offer you some tea or coffee when coming in from a cold day, with the small radio on the counter playing the local holiday station. Was it bad that Connor was kind of loving this kitchen? 

Yeah, it was weird, Connor decided. There was something innately uncool about a teenage boy fantasizing about a goddamn _kitchen_. Goddamn, Connor. 

But the two of them settled down on the couch with their portable pizza and played the PS3 that sat in the TV unit, some Call of Duty game or something, Connor wasn’t super familiar with first-person-shooter games, but he became very familiar with the way Evan bounced up and down whenever things became tense and the way he giggled when Connor made an absolutely ridiculous move because he couldn’t figure out which buttons did which. Evan assured him that he’d get better. Which meant that Connor was going to be coming back here enough to hone his video game skills. And that made him smile a little. 

Probably looked like a dumb smirk to Evan, but he needed more practise.


	10. mom is mom, i guess she’s pretty cool

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cynthia is criminally underdeveloped as a character in the musical. 
> 
> i'm here, one person, trying to change that. 
> 
> (also this is a bit of a cringe chapter and I'm sorry 'bout that but... I liked it, and it's also based off a comic I saw one time but because I'm a dumbass I forgot to save it, so... if you see it... let me know.... so I can properly credit the comic artist)
> 
> thank you for coming to my ted talk.

Connor didn’t know why everything seemed so shitty. Maybe it was that Evan wasn’t at school and he’d texted him and Evan had yet to respond. Maybe it was the gloomy weather or the way the sun sort of peaked through the clouds sometimes and made everything feel glossy in nostalgia. It made his skin prickle. He wanted it to rain, then it would be some English class level pathetic fallacy and he could live his damn life. Connor ached with loneliness. Is this what is was like to miss someone? Is this how awful being away from Evan will feel all the time? He hated it. 

His mom was sitting at the kitchen table when he walked down the hall to get a snack from the fridge. There was cold pasta in there from last night and he really wanted it. The new medication he got put on last week made him really hungry, as far as he could tell. It also could have been the hole in his chest. It felt like someone had sucked-punched him all over his body and now he was lying on the sidewalk, moaning and holding his insides together with whatever his arm could do. 

Crazy idea, wild one. But Connor was on the redemption train. He hadn’t fought with his mom in.. two days, not including that day, which was pretty good. Zoe and Larry were a different story, but his mom always wanted the best for him. And Connor wasn’t sure when he started thinking like that. It weirded him out kind of. There always seemed to be a haze of anger over every facet of Connor’s life that distorted everything and took them out of proportion to the enth degree. Now, his mom looked peaceful, sorting through some papers that were lying out on the table. The light from the bay windows was hitting her face just right and she looked younger than Connor remembered. 

Connor scratched the back of his neck through his hair. He didn’t know why he was nervous, but he was. “Hey… uh, Mom?” 

Cynthia turned to him with a bright smile on her face like seeing him was a highlight of her day, like she truly didn’t hear him walk in. “Oh, Connor! It’s nice to see you. How was your day? Do you need anything?” 

So he did need something. He couldn’t just answer no and slink off. He really wanted to. 

“Uh, this is really fucking _weird_ , but - can I-” 

Connor stalled, he stammered. His mom’s face fell a little. 

“Can I… shit, um… can I… have a… a hug?”

Thank fucking Jesus, Connor. You did it. You did a normal thing for kid to do. Asking for a hug, he would have checked it off the list if he didn’t need it so badly. No, it was weird. She wasn’t saying anything, she probably thought he was off his rocker for real this time. ‘Better make a call to the rehab centre, Connor’s really off the deep end this time’. And then Zoe would mock him again, and Larry would be ‘disappointed’ as per usual. Fuck! This was a mistake! Abort mission, you assfuck! He went to turn away, hiding his face in his curtains of hair. “Yeah, okay, nevermind! This was a _fucking_ stupid-”

A hand on his arm pulled him back, a light hand. He was caught aback when his mom collided with him, wrapping his torso with her body, her head not reaching much farther than Connor’s neck. And he stalled again, not sure what to do with his arms, so they just so of hung to the side for a moment. 

Oh. Well. This was… nice. This filled some gap inside of him. 

“Connor, I’m your mother. You can _always_ ask for a hug,” Cynthia said, muffled by his chest. 

Tears sprung up. His cheeks went red. 

_Why is Mom being so nice to me? I’m so awful. I’m a monster. If I weren’t in this house their lives would be so much better. Maybe they could have a dinner that came without a screaming match. Or go do family activities without a screaming match beforehand where I have to barricade myself in my room because Larry took the fucking door out. The upstairs of their house wouldn’t smell like weed. Or cigarette smoke. Or -_

He couldn’t do this, not now. It would make him cry tears that he couldn’t have his mom see. He was still a monster. There was still that. 

But he let himself go for a moment. He put his head down onto his mother’s head, sniffing her hair that reminded him of lavender, eyes closed and middle warming - thawing - from the cold. His arms went around her back and held her closer to him. 

“I’ll always be here for you if you need me, honey. I love you.” Cynthia sounded like she was crying, too. 

“I’m so sorry, Mom,” Connor blurted.

“For what?”

“For… the first week of school.”

“Oh, honey…”


	11. *to the tune of the final countdown* it’s a mental breakdown

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> couple of things before we get into it today
> 
> 1) (look im so sorry about that title)
> 
> 2)I saw the DEH book in shop the other day and I have decided that I don't want to read it.  
> it seems aggressively straight so we're keeping with the source material of just the musical, chill? it is also unreasonably expensive and I only had enough to buy Hank Green's new book which is exceedingly good so I feel like I made a good choice lmao
> 
> 3) I have also been listening to a lot of Queen recently. so that's the required listening today. listen to somebody to love and you will infuse your life with the level of panache that Freddie would have wanted
> 
> thanks babes I luv u

Edna St. Vincent Millay once wrote in a poem: 'Blown from the dark hill hither to my door/ Three flakes, then four/ Arrive, then many more.' 

Snowflakes fall one by one, you can count the first one, two, three, as they float down and tickle the tip of your nose. Problems, little things, arrive at your door one by one, until they swirl together in a mess of things without solutions, making a mess of your life. 

Connor could have kicked the air, if it was at all possible. His jaw and molars ached from clenching. He wanted to hurt something, break something, see it shatter and throw himself after it, trying to break something that just wouldn’t give up. 

People that didn’t want to die were always the ones dying. The school teacher with terminal cancer or the bright graduate student that gets hit by a bus or young kids killed in car accidents. It seemed unfair to Connor that he could not for the life of him get his body to quit. No matter how badly he wanted it.

It was all some big fucking joke. 

When he slit his wrists they put him in rehab. When he choked down a rainbow of pills his stomach had him puking up mud. He’d resorted to cigarettes to guarantee some sort of shortened life, but knowing the pranks the world liked to play, he’d live to be a hundred and fifteen. 

He hated doing this to Evan Hansen, but he needed to tell him he’d be going home. It was worth running over Dead Man’s Land if there was something on the other side. 

Phone numbers had been exchanged. Evan trusted him with this. But he couldn’t text anything. His goddamn fingers wouldn’t work. 

The dial tone seemed to run on forever. “H-hi?” Evan whispered.

“Fuck, sorry, Hansen. I know you hate the phone but it’s me, Connor. I have to tell you that I can’t give you a ride home today, something… came up. It’s not you, I promise.”

“Oh… okay. That’s alright. I’ll see you tomorrow?” Evan said. He sounded so dweeby. 

“Y-yeah. Tomorrow. Right. Thanks for, uh, understanding.”

When they hung up, Connor thought about the way Evan, the way the world, had to throw that wrench. He just had to ask about tomorrow. And Connor, forgetting everything in his handbook, agreed that he’d be at school tomorrow and that he’d have to hang out with Evan. 

Sitting in the hallway next to Jared and his gaming friends, Evan stared at the call received screen on his phone, both stunned that he answered it and that he had said something that made sense. Progress? Maybe. But only marginally. 

Suddenly the mushy leftover pasta he had for lunch seemed ice cold next to his cheeks and everything went kind of bland. 

Did he initiate plans? What came up that Connor couldn’t drive him home? It was probably that Zoe didn’t have her club or sport or council meeting of a wide variety after school. Maybe he had a lot of homework. Or he had a test to study for. But for some reason he couldn’t imagine Connor with a highlighter in his hand, making flash cards. Or there was the other option of his mental health. Maybe he was going home at lunch because things were getting to be a bit _much_. Evan knew that feeling, something that always flicked at the back of his ribs. He understood.

Then it made sense that Connor knew exactly what to say. He apologized. When was the last time anyone at this school heard a sincere apology from _Connor Murphy_? He knew that Evan hated phone calls. Had he mentioned that? Or did Connor know that about social anxiety disorder. It wasn’t _that_ hard to look it up. When was the last time _Connor Murphy_ cared enough about someone to look up symptoms of the disease they had? And he insisted that it wasn’t Evan’s fault, like he had read into Evan’s next train of thought before it even showed up on Evan’s board of arrivals. Maybe it was his mental health, thinking like that was easier when you were boiling in it, the pot getting too hot before you notice the flame beneath it. 

It was sympathetic resonance: Connor had plucked his A string and Evan was feeling the vibrations on his E string. Evan recognized this feeling, even expected it. 

Evan shot Connor a text: 

**Evan** : Hope you’re feeling okay and everything. Brains can suck sometimes.

Pressing send wrung Evan’s insides. It took Connor less than a minute to respond. Which was nice.

**Connor** : thanks i’ll be okay things are kinda shitty right now but i’ll be better hopefully

**Connor** : sorry again about today

**Evan** : It’s fine, don’t feel bad about it, these things happen. I completely understand. 

**Evan** : Just think about the trees, they make it through the winter and stay standing for a hundred more! 

He locked his phone, hoping he didn’t come off as pretentious or too much like a fuddy-duddy therapist or like he knew all the answers. He only knew what helped him. It was a little cheesy, but perhaps that’s why he liked trees so much. 

Trees endured. They lasted the winters without fresh food and days without seeing the sun, but every summer they blossomed and bloomed and absorbed everything like the winters never happened. The winters were always around the corner, but they existed in spite of that. The leaves almost always grew back, even if they were going to fall off again. They could fall to the ground and make something of themselves. 

Evan liked trees. 

And he liked Connor. Or at least that’s what it felt like right now.

Because it felt nice to have someone that understood.


	12. my life is kind of like Home Alone, only kevin used aftershave

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is the chapter where I pretend to know about weed.
> 
> ~enjoy~

Over the years of sneaking out for smokes and sneaking out at night, Connor had developed the best method for getting into his house and up to his room, undetected. It looked a little like this:

1\. Creep into the driveway. Going roughly over the bumps bounces the frame and makes the wheels louder. When getting out of the car, lift up the handles and fully and securely open the doors before exiting. Grab all your things before you get out, avoiding opening more doors than necessary. Keep the handles lifted when closing the doors and let the handle latch slowly. Don’t lock the car just yet, wait until you’re inside.

2\. Use the side entrance if it’s unlocked, which it usually is at the Murphy house, that leads into the garage. Use the path you’ve cleared before this to get past your dad’s workbenches and toolboxes and open the inside garage door slowly, note that most of these internal doors are spring-engaged so they provide resistance, so apply pressure constantly and gently to avoid large fluctuations in airflow and the possibility of it flinging back into your face. 

3\. Remove your shoes and place them on a piece of carpet if it’s available. Socks are the best, bare feet are only the better.

4\. Take a moment to survey the area before you move too much, hold your breath and listen for breathing, footsteps, the clicking of keyboard keys, sniffling, coughs, the rustling of a food package, or clunk of a drink being set on a surface. If you hear none of the above, you’re probably in the clear, but caution is still advised. If you do hear any of the above, you must be vigilant about your next actions. Reconsider the need for stealth, is there anyway you could simply say ‘hello’ and quickly exit, feigning something of importance upstairs. Usually not an option. Continue reading. 

5\. Walk carefully near the edge of the room, if you can; the floorboards are better supported closer to the walls. If there are no walls, heavy furniture works in a similar way. Heel-toe and light footsteps are key.

6\. Pets can be useful in making a plausible explanation for any noticeable movement noises. Dogs can either make or break this; know your dog before using this tactic - do they bark at only humans they know? Only strangers? At anything? Best used with dogs that prance by for an ear rub before running around in a couple circles and going on their way, only barking at solicitors. Not valid if your dog died four years ago. 

7\. Carpeted stairs are your friend. If, unfortunately, your mom decided on hardwood floors when designing the house, use your socks. They are your lifeline. Take slow steps, using the outside edge as described earlier, and pause for more noise from the main living area. Nothing? Keep going, one at a time. 

8\. Once upstairs, it serves you well to remember that your movements are still heard from the floor below. Move in a similar manner as the main floor and stairs, if your house is especially creaky, some extra little movement can be passed off as the house settling or the dog chasing after its own tail. Very excusable.

9\. Once you’ve made it to your bedroom, wrench the handle of the door before closing it and do so very carefully. Slamming the door by accident can throw away all your hard work. Once inside, door closed, toss your bag onto your bed and slowly move towards it, as well - the less time you spend on the ground the better, and your bed distributes weight over a larger area. 

10\. Now’s the time to press the lock button on the car keys. It’s been long enough since any outside noises have happened near your house that any family members will assume it is a neighbour’s car and not think twice. 

Ah, a subtle ten steps. His toes were cold from all the sock antics and now he’d thought about their dog-

Whatever. He needed to smoke, this is what he came here for. 

Rolling on his side and stretching almost as far as he could, Connor pulled open his bedside table drawer, the bottom one, and dragged his plastic bag with two lovely, lonely pieces of joint paper and some weed left in it, along with the lighter he kept in there. He rolled one quickly on his knee. Gently picking it up, he placed it between pursed lips. Then lit the end of it and took a deep breath in. It stung the back of his throat and he immediately knew that he didn’t get everything clean. Shit. He’d have to be more careful next time. 

Sighing, he slumped back on his bed. His back ached, he noticed that now.   
Snacks. And drinks. He kept them here somewhere. Connor stuck a hand under his bed frame and rummaged around a bit. He pulled out his half-eaten bag of Cheeto puffs and an open container of Gatorade. _Fucking sweet_ , thought Connor. Sometimes he was resorted to old pretzels and a glass of water and that’s just fucking sad as hell. Popping open the cap of the Gatorade, he stuck it in the side of his mouth and sucked at it while staring at the posters on his wall. 

The loser that he was, he had the periodic table on the wall opposite his bed and another with portraits of each of the presidents. Zoe had gotten them for him when there was a poster sale at their school. He didn’t want to take them down, he liked them up there. Connor’s eyes blurred over the coloured boxes on the periodic table. If he were sober and cared more, Connor could tell you what the colour and the order and the placement of the elements meant. But for now, and for most of the times that Connor spent letting his eyes lose focus over this poster, his mind didn’t work. The joint was already making his head buzz and lift up and out of his tired body.   
He held the joint in his other hand and opened his phone with the other finally reading the messages waiting for him:

**Evan** : It’s fine, don’t feel bad about it, these things happen. I completely understand. 

**Evan** : Just think about the trees, they make it through the winter and stay standing for a hundred more!

Huh. Evan Hansen. Connor didn’t know what to think about him. Sure, he started out feeling bad about him and everything surrounding him was clouded by Connor’s ass behaviour. But now? Now? God, this boy loved things so purely that at first he thought it must be fake. Trees? Really? 

He quit out of the app, then opened it again. The messages were still there. Connor smiled. 

This boy. God, this boy. He could not be more dweebie or more embarrassing but just… the way he spoke to Connor. He didn’t know if it was his tone, how he didn’t mock him or act like he was afraid of him. Or was it the things he said? He understood. Connor didn’t know how similar social anxiety disorder was to depression, but still, Evan was lonely, like him. He understood that part, the part where sometimes it ate pieces out of him, leaving him bleeding with another hole in his side. It rumbled like hunger and tore like he was tissue paper. He can’t sleep without a pillow to hold, it hurts more at night when you can’t sleep and there’s no one to tell about what’s keeping you up. He wished he could tell Evan about his despair, how he laid awake not wanting to be alive anymore. He didn’t want morning to come. It was his worst nightmare. He went to bed, wishing that that had been his last morning, the last time he’d have to do this. In a cruel joke, cruel turn of events, he wakes up perfectly fine at seven a.m. and life goes on. 

He had depression. Sure. He was high functioning? Maybe. Borderline. Does that make him better or worse at this whole life thing? Not sure. 

Evan fucking Hansen. Connor couldn’t stop thinking about him and his stupid dark blond hair and the way he had freckles that faded into his ears and pink lips. God, he shouldn’t be thinking about Evan Hansen’s lips. 

What exactly had he gotten himself into? 

Jesus, this wasn’t going to end well, whatever his jumbled thoughts amounted to. He might be in love- shit. He wasn’t in love with Evan Hansen. He might be. He might be in love with Evan Hansen. Fuck, dude, you barely know him. 

Fuck, you want to know him better. And get to stare at his lips a little more.

Fuck, dude, you can’t date Evan Hansen.


	13. meet me at your locker, halfway

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chasing cars is a song that makes me cry. 
> 
> not exactly appropriate for a chapter I titled after that old BEP song.
> 
> but there are a lot of songs that make me cry, so I'd better start listing them now.

When Connor finally came to school on Thursday, he still wanted to die. Or maybe sleep for the next couple years. Anything was better than walking through a crowded hallway, dodging ninth graders and their backpacks and teachers with carts full of books or computers. He wore his best ‘leave me alone before you die’ face, hoping that people would part before him. It worked. Sometimes.

Head down, he rammed into his locker and quickly rolled in his combination, throwing the door open. Just as he got his chemistry textbook and English binder from the top shelf, a figure stopped just short of his locker door. 

“H-hey,” said Evan. 

“What’s up?” Connor deadpanned. He lifted his eyes to meet his face and they were so dry even that rubbed a sand papery hurt. 

“Oh, I’m sorry if - if this is a bad time and you want to be alone. Sorry, I can just -”

“It’s fine, Hansen. I promise. I’m… tired.”

Evan stood quietly by while Connor packed his bag, sticking a finger underneath his cast in trying to scratch an itch that he couldn’t quite reach. 

Connor lifted his bag strap up and over onto his shoulder and stared at Evan while shutting his locker door. 

“What’s up, Hansen?” Connor asked. “Why are you choosing to be seen with your local school shooter type?”

Evan froze. “Uh, because, uh, I like hanging out with you.”

Connor ruffled his hair so more of it fell to the one side, sighing. “That does not sound real, Evan. It’s just not realistic. No one fucking likes spending time with me.”

“Well, maybe I do,” said Evan, voice so small, he could barely hear him over the buzz of the hallway. “You said you like hanging out with me, so I like hanging out with you.”

Let Connor be painted stunned. No one had ever really said that to him and been serious. It was easier to play it off as a joke, it was easier to let people take it back. Evan had dug himself a hole he was never going to get out of; he was going to be lying in the ditch with Connor for the rest of his senior year and possibly longer if he went anywhere close-by for college. People remembered the school shooter for being nothing more than that. He was mysterious, he guessed. He had the long hair and the weird, dirty jackets and the harsh attitude. If he were Hansen, he’d be on the other side of the school by now. But Evan kept standing there, looking at his fucking shoes. 

Enough silence had passed to move on from the moment. 

“What class do you have?”

“Huh?” Evan jerked his head up. 

Connor didn’t have enough energy to overreact to his overreacting, even though it was stupid as shit. “What class do you have currently? Your first period?”

“Um, Calculus.”

“God, how do you survive, Hansen? Calculus? At this ungodly hour of the morning? I’d rather drop out of this godforsaken school than do calculus before nine a.m.”

Evan picked at his shirt. “I, uh, don’t mind. I like math-”

“Oh my god, I don’t know if I can hang out with someone who unironically states they love math.”

“I didn’t say I _love_ math. I like it. No big deal. It makes sense so I don’t mind,” Evan said. A surge of confidence let him speak. He was in a groove with Connor, he could work like this. Somehow, talking with him was like having new paints squeezed onto your palette and you could swirl them all together and not have to worry about running out. Supplies felt infinite and... comfortable. 

“Fine, but you’re still walking on thin fucking ice.” He noticed the hallway crowd was dwindling and the space was clearing out. “Well, let’s go. The bell’s gonna ring soon and you can’t be late for Calculus and I have to be fashionably late for Media Arts.”

“You’re gonna be late, Connor? It’s the second week of school.”

“I can’t have the teachers getting their expectations set too high, Hansen. I don’t want to disappoint them. It’s a miracle I’m even showing up, to be honest, and they should feel so lucky.”

Connor shrugged and took off towards the stairs, leaving Evan giggling a little in his trail. It felt nice having a… friend. They were friends, Evan decided. Cool. A friend.

His friend, _Connor Murphy_ \- he tried it out in his head. Connor, his friend.


	14. a threesome? kinky.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> im in a big library right now.
> 
> im terrified to make noise. 
> 
> thanks for coming to my ted talk today.

The only problem here was Jared. Evan hated it, but they did cling to each other somehow. Evan felt obligated to eat his lunch with Jared and sometimes his gaming friends, even when they just played a stupid MMORPG that Evan had never been on and didn’t really understand. And then Jared would ridicule him for not understanding it. So Evan had learned to stop trying to get involved, it was maybe the only time of the day he didn’t worry about interactions and having something to say - Jared liked it when he was quiet anyway. 

Only this time, at around 12:09, _Connor Murphy_ showed up at Evan’s locker. Eerie, as Evan never told him where his locker was. Even eerier was the way Jared looked him up and down like an invasive species of carp that certainly did not belong in his lake. 

“What do you want, _Connor_?” Jared asked, voice slithering with some kind of sarcastic disgust. 

“I’m here to talk to Evan, don’t wet your panties over it,” Connor replied, eyes still dead tired. He turned to Evan: “Mind if I join you?”

Evan pulled his backpack out from beside him and clutched it in front of his legs. “S-sure,” he said. 

Connor folded his long legs and plopped down on the school’s cold tile floor. 

Jared had his mouth curled up and breathing heavy, like he wanted to say something. It wasn’t like he was in any shape to take on _Connor Murphy_ , though. He kept his mouth shut and turned back to the couple of guys on the other side of him, scooching so that he had his back towards Evan and Connor. Shunning them, that was his tactic. Evan didn’t mind. 

“So…,” sighed Connor, eyebrows raised, “how was Calculus and…?”

“History,” Evan finished for him.

“Calculus and History, how were they?”

Evan immediately blanked, the past two and a half hours had disappeared. “Uh, they were alright. We’re, um, doing this….”

_Think, Evan, think. Jeez, um. God, he even stammers in his own brain. Think, Evan, think. The project, talk about The Project. You remember, right? You’ve got this and if you don’t then you’re a worthless failure, alright? Great. Cool. Fantastic._

“... this project, in History. We have to research a very specific thesis on the Civil War and then write a report on it.”

“Cool, whatcha doing for it?” Connor opened a sandwich and started eating it, still looking expectantly at him. 

_Think, Evan, think._

“Uh… um, not sure yet. We just got introduced to the assignment and I couldn’t really decide anything in class because there were a lot of options and it’s tough to pick something so specific in such a short time, so…. yeah, um….”

“That’s fine, I’m sure you’ll figure something out, you’re one of the smart kids. Always in those AP classes. You’re in AP, right?”

“For History, Chemistry, and Calculus, yeah.”

“Even worse! AP calc? You really have it out for yourself, Hansen. But I know that you’re in my AP chem class.”

“Yeah and we’re making partners today,” Evan noted. 

“Really? That’s shitty.”

Evan smiled. He wondered what Connor would be like as a partner, then Connor said the very obvious thing: “God, I hope Vanderbeck sticks me with you. Then we can be buddies, right? I know I can trust a Smart Kid to do their work. It’s me you’d have to be worried about.”

“No,” Evan nodded. “I - I trust you.”

“You really shouldn’t, Hansen. I’m not exactly known for my aptitude in doing excellent work and handing assignments in on time, I’m a nightmare until the last minute. You should be worried.”

So Evan just shrugged. He hated when he didn’t know what to say and a grieving silence followed. He hated it, it made his skin itch and he was hyper aware of everything: the way his shirt touched his stomach and his hair tickled the back of his neck and his hands were a little sticky and how Connor was happily eating his sandwich and didn’t seem to be bothered by the silence at all. His mind searched for something to talk about, looking around and looking around. 

“Hey,” Connor called. “You’re not eating anything.”

“I, uh, don’t - I don’t - I’m not.” Evan shook his head. 

But Connor was already digging in his bag. “I’ve been on a good eating kick this week so my mom packs me a ton of food, here: take this apple and the chips and… the wrap. I’m already eating the sandwich and I’ve claimed the cucumber and fruit snack, so…”

Connor tossed the food at Evan so the plump crinkling of plastic landed on his pants. 

_What do you say when someone gives you food? Are we in some kind of debt? How am I going to pay back Connor Murphy for his food?_

“Thanks... thanks, Connor.”

“Consider it a gift from my mom,” he replied. 

“Oh,” Evan breathed. 

He ate the food and felt incredibly dumb because _of course_ you feel better with food in your stomach and some glucose in your veins. He took biology for goodness’ sake. The food removed the block in his brain, working together to float the dam downstream. _You think better when well-fed, Hansen. You need to remember this - and bring your own food next time._


	15. lab partners? lab partners.

Seeing Connor for the third time that day was kind of nice, but also kind of weird. Evan had never really noticed Connor before, at least not in high school. Had he been in other classes he’d had? Maybe last year? Or the year before that? 

Maybe he never noticed because Connor had never noticed him. Because now Connor gave him this weird half-grin thing that he observed as a smile, then sat down in his regular seat. 

The whole class was sitting in pairs already, at lab desks with two seats, and Evan was sitting next to a girl that smelled really nice and wore big glasses and made him really nervous. She wrote her notes in green pen and highlighted in orange. Connor sat across the room, next to a guy that Evan also didn’t recognize. 

Then Ms.Vanderbeck’s desk was at the front of the room, where she sat in front of the huge chalkboards, on her laptop. When bell rang, she opened a document on the classroom projector and stood up, pushing her glasses up on her nose. “Good afternoon, class,” she said, though she seemed far too young to be addressing the class as ‘class’. She looked to be maybe four, maybe five, years older than the kids she was teaching. Although, it could have just been the big, curly hair or the way she trimmed her eyebrows, those things really made or broke your look. Or at least that’s what Evan thought. “As you all know, you will be assigned lab partners for the semester, starting with the titration lab that’s due at the end of the month. I’m going to post the partners in a moment and you can meet with them, introduce yourselves, then we’ll be doing a mini-lab for today’s lesson.”

By then, the classroom chatter had already started. People bracing for the list of names, hanging onto their friends, dearly hoping to be put together. Evan just wanted to be paired with someone who was nice and didn’t make him talk during presentations, because he knew there would be at least one lab where they had to show the experiment, but he also hated answering teacher’s questions and hated explaining or… talking, at all. Ms.Vanderbeck seemed nice enough, but she had yet to prove herself to Evan. And Connor just thought she was too pretentious. All he wanted was someone who gave enough of a fuck to do the work well and didn’t mind that he seemed like a dead weight until he wrote the first test.

Then the list popped up on the screen and Evan squinted to find his name, Connor did the same. 

And there it was:

_Evan Hansen & Connor Murphy_

Good. Evan could breathe a little better. 

He looked over at Connor, who was looking over at him and giving him that strange grin, so Evan smiled back. 

People moved out of Connor’s way in the shuffle to meet each other’s partners; the room became claustrophobic with noise.

“So,” Connor said, “I guess it’s us. Thank God.”

“Y-yeah, this is good, this is a good thing.”

Connor just nodded and took the seat next to Evan’s. “But do you remember anything about titration?”

Evan chuckled. “No, not really. How about you?”

“Not a clue, kind of had trouble pronouncing titration actually.”

And that made Evan laugh harder. 

Yes. This was going to be a good thing.


	16. your sister, yeah, i like her

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you know when you're scrolling through the girl you like's tumblr and you see one of those affectionatesuggestion posts or whatever and you feel like you might die?
> 
> because you're projecting?
> 
> that's today's mood. 
> 
> (also you should listen to sleeping at last, just anything in their discography, it all feels like crawling under a blanket in the wintertime)

Evan heard guitar from farther down the hall, something stringy and jazzy and he knew it was Zoe. She was nice, Evan liked Zoe. He always almost forgot that he used to _like_ Zoe. 

But Connor made a face when he heard the guitar. 

“What?” Evan asked. “W-why do you look like that?”

“Zoe’s making noise, I don’t like it. So fucking annoying.”

“But we’ll just close the door, you can’t even hear it from in here,” Evan said, stepping into Connor’s bedroom to make the point. Then he realized there was no door on the frame, even the hinges were gone. Connor gave him a look of ‘I told you so’. 

He huffed, not tearing his eyes away from her room. 

“You don’t always have to fight with her, Connor. Zoe’s really nice. You - you shouldn’t bother her.” Evan took Connor’s arm and tugged him along with him inside the room. “See? You can’t hear… anything.”

“It’s just that she just… gets on my nerves. Everyone in this fucking house does, it’s a nightmare,” Connor choked through clenched teeth. He’d started pacing.

Evan sat down on his bed, fidgeting his feet against one another. He didn’t want Connor to blow up in front of him because he would cry and he knew it. He didn’t want Connor to get angry in front of him, _he didn’t want Connor to blow up in front of him because he was going to cry_. He’d cried the last time, why would this be any different?

Connor noticed, for the first time in his goddamn life, how Evan was sort of cowering before him. He’d hunched over, staring at his shoes, breathing loudly. He unclenched his fists and they yelled with the unyielding stretch. All Connor wanted to do right now was go over to Zoe’s room and bang a hand on her door telling her to shut the fuck up and he was going to kill her if she didn’t put that stupid fucking guitar down, it’s what he would have done if Evan wasn’t there. 

But Evan already looked so fucking scared, it was kind of pathetic. Something kept Connor on fire, hot and urgent, his anger bubbling and popping inside, but Evan couldn’t take his rage. Connor couldn’t dole it out on him right here. Social anxiety disorder did not mix well with Connor’s Anger Issues. 

“Look, I’m sorry, Evan.” Connor sat down next to Evan on his bed, bringing his knees up to his chest, not caring about getting dirt on his blankets, trying to jail in the banging of his chest. He wanted to punch something. 

“It’s - it’s fine,” Evan mumbled. 

“It’s not fine, Evan, you don’t have to say that,” Connor said. “I know that Zoe’s a good person and I actually like her a lot. Hard to believe, I know.”

He sighed, trying to think through what he was saying but he couldn’t think. 

“Zoe’s… awesome. I’m jealous of her in all those school activities and on honour roll and taking a million AP classes in eleventh grade and she has _friends_ , tons of them. The only time she can’t get friends is because of me, because they don’t want to hang out with _Crazy Connor’s sister_ like it rubs off or something. God, it makes me so fucking… mad. Just so mad.”

His head started hurting. 

“Have you - have you tried telling her that?” Evan said. His voice felt far away. 

Connor shook his head. “How?”

“Well, an - an apology might do some good, I might start with that. I mean, if I were Zoe, which obviously I’m not, I don’t know how Zoe thinks or -”

“I can’t _apologize_ , Hansen. Not after almost seventeen years of treating her like shit. She _hates me_ like if I died I _know_ she wouldn’t care. She’d probably throw a goddamn party if I took a gun to my head and my parents, too. They all _hate me_ , you don’t understand, Hansen, I’m a fucking demon, my whole family thinks I’m some fucked up monster and I deserve it, I deserve every fucking bit of it! I’m a nightmare! Why are you even here, Hansen! Why are you-?”

Connor didn’t know when he got out of the bed and started pulling at his hair. Or when he’d started choking on his tears. His face was burning and his throat hurt - when had he started yelling? Everything was white and hot and shaking. 

Evan was crying. Just something silent in small lines, but still....

Connor felt even worse than he did before. 

“Can I try an apology now?” Connor asked softly. Tears came in dirty streaks down his face. “I’m sorry, Evan, for lashing out at you. I didn’t mean to make you upset, I just can’t control my anger. I’m sorry. And I’m sorry if that sounded rehearsed or fake but that’s the way I learned to apologize when I was a delinquent kid who didn’t know how to function as a human being, not that I’ve improved all that much over the years, still kind of a mess.”

“You don’t have to…” Evan smiled. “apologize for your apology.”

“Are we cool?” Connor asked. 

Evan teetered on a line for a moment, planning how he wanted this moment to end. “Only if you apologize to Zoe.”

“Huh.” 

Evan was ballsy, Connor decided. He used the end of his sleeve to wipe up his cheeks. 

“If that’s too much, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to push you or anything, but I just thought if you were calmed down then I think Zoe would appreciate it, especially these days,” Evan set out hastily. 

“No, you know what, Hansen? I told you I was trying to turn a corner, I’m turning the corner. Do you want me to do it right now?”

Evan smirked a little. “No time like the present.”

“Look at you, Hansen. Those new one-liners look really good on you.”

Connor smoothed back his hair, took a sip out of the day-old glass of water on his nightstand. His throat worked now. “You have to come with me, though, Hansen. Otherwise she’s just going to think I’m high out of my mind and call the cops or something. Come on.”

So he moved quickly to Zoe’s bedroom, Evan following loosely behind. 

Knocking on the door was hard, rough, even. 

Zoe didn’t yell like Connor did, she probably thought it was their mom. Connor never knocked, only rapped on her door. You can imagine her shock when he stood there in front of her door, picking at the end of his hoodie sleeves.

“What do you want?” She asked. 

Connor breathed so deep he almost coughed. “I wanted to say sorry for calling you a bitch at breakfast this morning. You didn’t deserve it.”

“Are you high? What the fuck?” Zoe laughed, moving to shut her door.

“Wait - no, I’m not.”

“He’s really not,” Evan piped up from the shadows. 

Zoe shook her head. “Evan? Why the hell are you here? What’s going on?”

“I’m apologizing to you. I’m not high,” Connor said. 

“Whatever,” Zoe said, slamming the door shut. 

The hallway felt very quiet. Connor’s breathing was loud. “See? That’s what happens when I try to do the right thing, Evan. It never works. I’m so fucked up that no one thinks I’m serious.”

“I’m sure she’ll come around, you were trying to do the right thing, which is what really counts, right? Like, you didn’t yell at her - that’s good.”

Connor shrugged. “Guess so.”

He trudged back to his room and flopped onto the bed. 

“I just wish I could have a different life. Like, things would be so much easier if I could just be someone else, someone that has friends and doesn’t have a fucked up mind and can have normal conversations with people, you know? God, what I wouldn’t give to live someone else’s life.”

Evan’s heart seized with how much that hurt. It’s like Connor could read his mind, he’s sure he’s said those exact words before.

“Anyways,” Connor sighed, sitting up and grabbing his bag. “We’d better start working on our design lab.”

“Yeah, sure,” Evan mumbled. His insides were all shaken up after Connor said that. He didn’t know what to think, except for that they must be more alike than he thought. Maybe that was it.


	17. grade this, bitch

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I came across this post a long time ago that proposed the hc that Connor Murphy was lowkey very smart but didn't let anyone know about it.
> 
> this chapter is dedicated to that post. 
> 
> (the blog was deleted in the interim so I can't even credit them, but I loved the hc)

Okay, so to say Connor was a smart kid would be an understatement… and a paradox. He smoked weed, he smoked cigarettes, he walked into crosswalks without looking at all, and he drove ridiculously fast sometimes. He was not smart in that respect. 

But book smarts? People can say a lot of shit about Connor Murphy, and they do, but they can’t say he’s not smart. His straight nineties could speak for themselves on that matter. 

But _Connor Murphy_ didn’t study. When’s the last time anybody saw _Connor Murphy_ with a book in his hands? 

As far as Connor knew, he showed up for class and paid attention and then put it on paper when it came time for tests. He took almost all AP classes. So screw you for thinking he was some dumbass. Connor Murphy was a lot of things, but not a dumbass. Not that. 

No one ever asked for his homework or to copy his answers or what he answered for question 2. b). No one looked at _Connor Murphy_ and was intimidated by his intelligence. They mostly got intimidated by his scowl or greasy hair first. 

They had decided to go back to Connor’s house that day, to work on their project. And, Evan, as amazed as he was at Connor’s house, just thought it was cold. Everything was beige and glass and dark hardwood. Even the kitchen was hardwood, which Evan thought was strange. But, then again, maybe no one here scrubbed the floor with Mr. Clean like they did back home. 

Up in Connor’s room, it felt different, like it belonged in a different house altogether. The paint colour was the same as in the rest of the house, like they had it painted before they moved in and Connor took it upon himself to tack posters up before they could even think to paint the kid’s room. And the posters were… interesting. Across from his bed were some educational ones, like they would belong in an elementary school classroom, and then there were some band posters for Queen, The Rolling Stones, and a couple of others Evan couldn’t quite make out but had the same feel. Everything was thrown up haphazardly, like it was a matter of time not aesthetic that was on the line for Connor. Things were predictably messy, but in the one corner by the window, there it was. The easel. So he really did paint. 

So he really was being honest. 

“Nice room,” Evan said. 

“You don’t have to lie, Hansen.”

“It’s just a bit messy, that’s - that’s all.” Evan’s hands were already flying. 

“It’s chill, man, we both know it could use something. Maybe some new curtains….” Connor sat on his bed, leaning back to scan his room. 

Evan laughed quietly. “Yeah, maybe.”

And then, in the inevitable silence that followed, they both pulled out their laptops and began typing away. 

Connor wrote his portion of the lab perfectly, Evan didn’t have to muster up any courage to tell him that even his format was off. There was nothing. They just quietly typed away at their laptops until Connor got hungry.

“I’m gonna go get something to eat, you want something?” Connor asked. 

Did Evan want something? Good question. Evan didn’t have an appetite, he never had an appetite, but he knew that if he didn’t eat something now it meant he’d be nauseous or sleepy or irritable later. He wasn’t hungry but Evan wasn’t dumb enough to believe he could function without food. Except for when he was. Because, yeah, Evan would go to school when his mom was at work early or late depending on her shift, and would have not eaten breakfast and didn’t bring anything for lunch so he sat the whole day with a hole in his middle where he tried not to let himself be eaten alive. He would bring black coffee in a travel mug and hate himself because he hated black coffee and he was jittery enough as it was without caffeine and it just turned his anxiety levels up to thirty-five from a subtle, but normal, eighteen out of ten. Those days were a lot of days for Evan. Eating was weird but it was necessary, he guessed. And Evan would rather die than buy food for himself. Actually he would have most things happen to him before he ordered food. Like get hit by a bus or bungee jump or be dropped into the middle of the Pacific Ocean or be stuck in an elevator with Jared and a stack of mistakes that Evan had made in the last month. He had nightmares about that kind of thing, not that mistakes that he’d made didn’t keep him up at night, too. 

“Whatever,” muttered Connor. “I’ll just get you something, unless you want to come with.”

Evan pushed aside his laptop and jumped up without saying anything, following Connor down the stairs and into the Murphy’s kitchen. It was dark by this time, it must have been four-thirty, maybe five, o’clock, and there were no lights on in the kitchen until Connor pulled open the fridge and rummaged around before bringing a huge bottle of juice out and onto the counter. 

“Juice?” He asked. 

“Sure.”

“You like cheese sticks?”

“Cheese sticks?”

“Like… these,” Connor said and held up two plastic sleeves of white cheese. Oh. Evan had heard of those, the ‘peely’ cheese. He never got them as a kid, so he nodded and Connor threw it on the counter as well. 

“And I’ll get tortilla chips because there’s really nothing I love more than a plain tortilla chip,” Connor deadpanned. 

Which made Evan giggle. Which made Connor smile. Wow. Okay. He’s funny? Or - or cute? Weird. 

They carried all the stuff back up the stairs, including glasses and bowls, and dumped it on Connor’s desk.

“I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty fucking over working on this lab.”

“What - what do you want to do then?”

“YouTube?” Connor dragged his laptop over to where he sat on the bed, throwing the bag of chips next to him and started clicking through his recommended videos. 

“What kind of stuff do you watch?”

“Uh, I don’t watch much on YouTube, maybe, um, baking or cooking videos? Or something….”

“Have you seen ‘You Suck At Cooking’?”

Evan shook his head so Connor typed it into the search bar and chose a random video. “Me and Zoe used to watch this together sometimes, when I was…nevermind. It’s really good”

Piling the food in between them, Evan settled into the bed and sipped from his glass of juice. He held the glass with both hands and was extra careful not to spill on Connor’s green sheets. Yeah, they were green, more like an olive green or something that had gone through the wash a bunch of times and faded its glowing green to a sadder shade. 

Meanwhile Connor got tortilla chip crumbs literally everywhere and he knew he’d be sleeping in them that night. 

Evan set his glass on the bedside table and noticed how Connor was licking the whole length of his reddened lips. “You - you should drink something.”

“Um, yeah. Guess I should.”

“I’ll get you some juice,” Evan jumped up and poured Connor his glass, handing him the juice while the video still played over them. “Why do you drink so much juice?”

And Evan felt bad for asking. Is that… too personal? Is juice too far?

“‘Cause I like the way it tastes, Hansen, why the fuck else? And I can’t drink Sprite all the time.”

“Just… isn’t juice like a weird choice?”

“Evan,” Connor blurted, his voice escalating to something comically forceful. “This is specially-imported, contraband sugar juice, brought here just for my consumption. It’s fucking great.”

“But - why?”

“Remember, I told you my mom doesn’t let anything with calories or sugar into this house. However, much like yourself, my mother is concerned with my hydration and since I refuse to drink much else, she buys it for me - maybe as a kind of forgiveness for never letting us have juice boxes as kids.”

Evan nodded, though he didn’t really understand. He couldn’t imagine his childhood without juice boxes, but it was the same for the cheese sticks. They were still kids though. They could live like they were for a while. 

So they both let it drop. Conversation was too taxing anyways, let alone writing that lab. So Connor reclined back on his bed and shifted the laptop around so that Evan would match his position. He did. Not without the fear of spilling the juice and of getting too close to Connor because he didn’t know where his touch comfortability was, and he was afraid of falling asleep.

The videos were pretty good, though, Evan decided. He tried to focus on them.

It made the both of them chuckle a couple of times, so Connor kept the playlist going, clicking on all of his favourite ones. This turned out to be a bit stressful, Connor self-conscious with every selection, hoping Evan would like the next one and that he would still want to watch. 

Of course Evan was fine with it all. He just wanted to live in this particular moment for a while, just uncomfortably placed around Connor’s laptop and the calm repetition of videos.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if you've gotten this far, thank you!!! it means so much to me that you enjoy my writing enough to continue on.
> 
> if you'd like to follow me on tumblr, though I don't post much for DEH stuff, I'm at thebiaesthetic.tumblr.com
> 
> love u guys so much.
> 
> thanks for reading :)


	18. this is a zoe chapter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's finally cold enough where I live that im enjoying hot coffee
> 
> (and I ventured out of my dorm for the morning when it was just sprinkling rain to get groceries so that I could have Zweites Frühstück and its been a magical day)
> 
> I hope you have a magical day as well
> 
> (knock on wood)

Zoe wasn’t home when she was supposed to be. Connor knew this for two reasons:

1\. She had told Connor that she was staying late after school.

2\. His mom was pacing a hole in the floor and had to have Connor sit and do his homework at the kitchen table while she stress peeled apples for the pie or cobbler or whatever the hell she was making. Now, his mom didn’t say anything, but after a half-hour had passed after the end of band practise, he could see the worry lines on his mom’s face get deeper. She moved her phone closer to where she was working. 

**Connor** : did u die????

**Connor** : can’t believe ur dead now mom’s gonna call the cops if you don't call in the next fifteen minutes

Oddly, Connor found himself thinking of what Evan would do. Evan was a good person, he deserved friends and just didn’t have any because of his stupid fucking anxiety. Evan would… offer to do Zoe a favour. He would… vouch for her? Yeah, he’ll try that. 

**Connor** : if ur doing something and you want to stay out I can tell mom that ur studying or something, then she won’t send the cops after you 

**Zoe** : Yeah, I got asked out to coffee with someone and I’m sorry it’s running late. Kind of don’t want to leave right now but I forgot to text. Tell mom I’m studying with a friend and I’ll be home for dinner. I’ll pay you back later. 

He wished Zoe didn’t feel like she had to pay him back. It was a favour. He was trying to be nice. But it was understandable that no one would trust _Connor Murphy_ to do something without payment. He was an asshole, after all. 

He told Cynthia what Zoe had told him: “Hey, I got a text from Zoe that says she’s doing some studying with a group of friends, not sure which ones, but she’ll be home for dinner. Something about a big biology test tomorrow? Not sure.”

“Oh,” she sighed, “that’s… good for her. Just wish she would have texted me, but, you know Zoe, always so busy that she gets forgetful, like her father.”

Connor thought it was weird that Cynthia thought of Larry more as Zoe’s father than his. It was fine. He didn’t think of Larry much as a father anyways. 

True to her word, Zoe didn’t get home until Cynthia was putting steaming dishes of glossy green beans and some kind of seasoned chicken down on the table. Even Larry was home before Zoe. 

She arrived in a huff of cold air from the outside, throwing her shoes onto their new boot mat and dumping her backpack and saxophone case at the bottom of the stairs, like she knew Larry would yell later if her stuff was left on the floor overnight and he tripped over it on his way to get his coffee in the morning. It was their little routine. Zoe slumped into her seat next to Connor. “Thanks for waiting for me, we got a little carried away,” she muttered. 

Cynthia smiled. “We didn’t have to wait at all, sweetheart. Connor was just going to clean up his school things and then we’ll eat. I should go find your father…”

Connor closed his laptop and piled his textbooks together, moving them to a far edge of their kitchen counter. “How was studying for that bio test, Zoe? I heard from a couple people in my class that the second one of the semester is pretty bad.” God, Connor was so bad at this fabricating a lie thing. And thank god that their mom walked out of earshot for a couple minutes. 

Connor rushed into the story: “I told Mom you were studying for a bio test with a group of friends. Didn’t mention which ones, mostly because I couldn’t think of any one of your friend’s names - no offense - but I was pretty low-key otherwise.”

“Thanks for covering for me,” Zoe said. “What do you want?”

“I don’t need you to give me anything. Consider it… a favour.”

Zoe just stared at him, stunned and eyes squinted in confusion, until Cynthia walked in with Larry in tow. He looked exhausted, as per usual, and had his tie loosened and hair ruffled up out of its gelled part, as per usual. 

Connor didn’t know if he was jaded or too crazy to realize he’d lost his edge, but nothing about his parents surprised him anymore. You know when you’re a kid and you think your parents are like the best thing in the world and they do cool things and have cool adult jobs and they treat you to ice cream on a Friday night and they become these figures of mystery and esteemed awesomeness? Connor was over it. He knew that Larry was stressed and that meant that he would get annoyed over dinner with something _anything_ Connor did that day, which meant he would yell and Connor would yell back and Larry would slam his glass on the table and his mom would wince in fear that it would break, so Connor would storm off and brood in his room until he got too tired and fell asleep in his regular clothes. 

Cynthia was the same way. Connor would come home from school and eat something because he was feeling dizzy (unless it was a good eating week, which would inevitably end with a comment or something about his body and then he wouldn’t eat in a constant way for a month), then try to go upstairs to nap or write something for a project, but Cynthia would give him these Puppy-Dog Eyes and tell him that she was feeling lonely or that she wanted him to read out his presentation to her or she needed company or she was going to ‘fall asleep writing up the tax forms’. Because Cynthia wasn’t dumb, Connor knew that. She was completely aware that Connor did bad things when he was alone: he only cut when he was alone, he only smoked when he was alone, he only punched things when he was alone (minus that one time, but it doesn’t count right now). That was part of the reason why the door to his bedroom got taken off. 

The other was Larry’s rage, but Cynthia told him it was ‘for his own good’. So he doesn’t get any privacy. And they wondered why he sneaked out at night….

Dinner didn’t taste like much, but Connor didn’t taste much nowadays. His senses didn’t work right. There was something fucked up about him and it had to do with that, he was convinced. Nothing affected him like it used to. Tastes and smells didn’t hit him as strongly, but things that hurt or made him angry were life-threatening - he could scream something deathly and rip his hair out, that’s how bad it was, how badly it hurt. 

His dials were all fucked: Either they were up to twelve or down at two. Like a sound mixing board that had been played with by a three year old, and he was the assault on your ears that resulted. 

Oh, god.

Sometimes Connor could feel when it all slipped out from underneath him. Fingernails had to dig into palms to make sure he was actually feeling things. He tried to pick out a word from the conversation the rest of them were having but he couldn’t really hear anything. There was ringing in the air. Or his ear. 

“Connor?” The voice was soft and concerned. His mom. 

“Yeah?” He sounded stripped. 

“I asked if you enjoyed your classes today. Did you hear me?”

“Um, sorry, I just… wasn’t… um, wasn’t listening.”

Larry piped up: “You know, Connor, the least you could do is pay attention when we talk with you. This is a family dinner-”

“Larry, that’s enough,” she snipped. “He’s obviously not feeling well.”

His mom liked it when he showed manageable symptoms. She could handle bringing him upstairs and covering him in her heated blanket, kissing his head goodnight.

Connor could really have gone for a heated blanket right then. 

“No, I’m okay. Sorry, I just zoned out. I’m tired,” Connor mumbled. 

He knew Zoe hated it when he was the centre of attention, she spared no detail when shouting her grievances.

_Don’t make a scene. Don’t make a scene. Don’t make a scene. Don’t make a scene. Don’t make a scene. Don’t make a scene. Don’t make a scene. Don’t make a scene. Don’t make a scene._

You’re fine, Connor Murphy. Everything is fine. 

_I think I’m having a panic attack. Or… some kind of attack. All I know is that something is attacking me._

Pull it together, Murphy. You’re a man.

_What does that have to do with anything? I think my body is trying to kill itself._

Connor took his fork back into his hand and plucked some green beans up, shoving them in his mouth. Chewing and swallowing felt foreign. They had invaded his body. He might’ve thrown up. 

But the other Murphys moved on in conversation without him, dropping him on the side of the road. His answer to the question wouldn’t have been that interesting anyways.


	19. larry is now perry (mason)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you know that scene from it's always sunny, with the poster that says 'science is a liar sometimes'
> 
> that's the mood.
> 
> (don't take astronomy kids, it doesn't make any sense)
> 
> (unless you need it to graduate, like yours truly, in which case... take it... I guess)

Evan and Connor had gone out _a lot_ that week. To the woods, to Starbucks (where Evan made fun of Connor for ordering a Refresher, because they still count as juice), to the public library (where Evan _definitely did not_ fall asleep on the reading cushions), and always ended up hanging out in Connor’s room watching dumb videos. After You Suck At Cooking was Jenna Marbles, then MacDoesIt, then emilia fart - Connor had an endless knowledge of Youtube content.

It was after one of those particular sessions that Connor returned from dropping Evan off at home, walked into the living room, and intercepted with Larry flipping through bills on the couch. He had his reading glasses on and Connor figured, much like he always did, that if he walked quietly enough he could make in to get a drink and sneak right back out - no conversation needed. Connor wished he could be invisible sometimes, these times. It would be _so_ helpful. 

“Who’s that that you’re spending so much time with these days?” Larry asked. 

Connor was so spooked, his heart probably physically jumped up and out of his body. “Evan, Evan Hansen,” he replied. He tried to calm his breathing as much as possible. 

“And you get along well with him?”

“Yeah…” Connor shifted his jaw at him. “Isn’t that what you wanted? For me to make good friends?”

“Well, I don’t know this Evan character.”

“He’s like the best kid at my school, he doesn’t get into trouble or skip classes or sell weed. I don’t think he’s even ever seen weed before.”

“That’s sure to change with you around, then.” There was an unmistakable disdain in his voice. 

“It doesn’t have to. I’m not an asshole, Larry. If he doesn’t want weed around then it won’t be around.”

“So you respect Evan’s wishes on that but not mine and your mother’s?”

“Yeah, because Evan cares about me, like a friend should.”

“And you think your mother -?”

“Mom does, but you sure as hell don’t!” Connor’s hands went flying up. “You couldn’t give less of a fuck if I miss school or fuck myself up unless it costs you money!”

“That’s not true - and watch your language in my house.”

“I’m not going to watch my fucking language, Larry.”

That was it. Connor could graph the exact moment he had crossed a line and it was usually right around when he told Larry he wasn’t following his fucking stupid rules. Whether it was about going to all his classes or not going out past curfew. Connor didn’t care how much Larry yelled at him, he didn’t care. 

“That’s it, young man! I’ve had enough of you and your attitudes and I want an apology before you. Do you know how hard I -?”

Except Connor didn’t hear that last part because he had already taken the three strides it took when he was angry to cross the kitchen and then skidded through their front foyer to the door to the basement. Larry had stopped his yelling. Connor held his breath for the shatter or the crash, that meant he had really fucked things up. 

Nothing.

So he’d be over it before dinner. 

Awesome. 

But Connor couldn’t stop. 

He couldn’t have friends without being a fuck up? He got a friend that was ten times the person he was and then Larry got mad at him for that? Yeah, why didn’t he just fucking throw Connor and all the progress he’d made right under the bus? 

God, everything, fucking everything - the lining of his stomach to the coils of his brain to the plasma in his blood to the stain of his fingernails - itched with a burn. Everything was on fire and he couldn’t control it. His body was going to explode if he didn’t do something. 

Evan didn’t deserve this, he didn’t deserve the mess, the utter fucking mess, that Connor was.

He didn’t have his razors.

Or - or anything. 

He was stuck in the basement and he was going to set the whole house on fire and that would get him kicked out for good, disowned and homeless.   
His phone burned in his pocket like molten iron. But he had to stay away from Evan. Not like this. Not fucking like this. 

He could punch Larry, he could shove him up into a wall and just feed it to him, his nose would go bloody and his teeth would fall out. Bad people got what they deserved, right? Where was his punishment? Where was the cosmic strike that would settle it all? 

He hated himself.

He hated - he hated himself. He _hated_ \- 

Connor’s fist collided with the concrete before he could think to stop it. He bit his tongue down just in time. 

It was a goddamn fucking miracle he didn’t break his hand. 

Connor didn’t want to look down.

But there it was: cracked knuckles with piercing red inners, burning fingers, and scrapes of white skin curling up. Why wasn’t he dripping blood? It seemed to surface like lava under molten rocks, rolling and flowing past its openings. Something should have broken him. 

There was a sink for laundry down there; he grabbed a towel from the pile of rags and pressed it to his knuckles where the skin had cracked and seeped red. Purple started to appear, rising up in rings of yellow and blue and green. Bruises were watercolour on your skin, all the pigments bleeding together into an awful scene.   
He wondered what Evan would think. 

He really was a monster, there was no denying it now. 

There were no other explanations. He wanted to punch so much more than the wall. He wanted to fight Larry and… and himself. If he could just give himself a good rough-up then maybe he would be able to handle all this shit. 

He was supposed to be a man. What does that even mean? Aren’t men allowed to be frank with themselves, men couldn’t run forever even if their legs were typically longer. Typically. Typically, Connor surrendered his feelings for numbness. He didn’t feel anything anymore, but it didn’t feel like a choice. 

He was a monster. 

_Connor Murphy_ , the monster, laid himself down on the cold cement floor and passed out from the pain for a while.


	20. maybe my time has come

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> happy thanksgiving weekend to all my canadians out there!
> 
> I will be sleeping in my own bed tomorrow night, warm and full of delicious pumpkin pie. 
> 
> just think of this as you read. 
> 
> (warm, cozy, happy thoughts)

Connor couldn’t think straight.

Which wasn’t that joke where he would follow it up with ‘of course I can’t, I’m gay as hell’. It wasn’t funny this time because literally no thoughts could bounce around his brain, everything had turned to mush and fallen out his ear like his grandpa used to tell him when he was younger about watching television. 

He was lying on the floor of his bedroom. 

Music in his headphones, staring swirls into the ceiling above. 

He held his throbbing hand to his chest. 

Why did Evan have to have had some _thing_ after school and had to go home right away? Or at least Connor thought he mentioned something about a therapist and his mom picking him up. Connor thought that he should get a therapist at some point. Would they help him think again? He hoped that was one of the magic tricks they could perform like his dad told him. Larry seemed convinced that a therapist was a miracle worker, an illusionist, a magician, for Connor - that they would solve all his problems. That, and a couple antidepressant pills, like the ones sitting on his dresser that Cynthia dropped off but he hadn’t touched in days. They reminded him of how easy it was to overdose. Just like how he was thinking about the codeine pills nestled up in the medicine cabinet.  
That night would have been the perfect night: Cynthia and Larry were out at some art auction and Zoe was having a sleepover at a friend’s house like she was eight fucking years old. No one would be home until early in the morning. No one was home right then. 

It was the perfect night for another reason: His parents being out of the house meant that he could properly clean his hand and wrap it up. No one would see the worst of it, except Connor. 

_We are always the witness of our worst moments, there is no escape, even when you look away or shut your eyes_ , thought Connor. _That was stupid, whatever. That… doesn’t make any sense._

With another being in the driver’s seat, Connor got up and lead himself into his parent’s bathroom, opening the slim cabinet and reaching up. He knew exactly where the orange vial was, tucked behind a case of disposable razor heads, which was kind of ironic to Connor. He would have laughed if he had the energy. 

He could do it. There was nothing holding him back from choking down that whole container, there was enough there to kill him. 

He wouldn’t have to deal with his parents or Zoe or his stupid fucking brain or the future or school or college or having nobody to love him or working a disappointing job or his streak of competence burning out or everyone knowing the truth or Evan or… or….

Evan. 

That… boy. God, that boy and his nervous little hands picking at whatever they could grab and the way he smiled into his shirt when he liked something Connor said. He loved Evan like nothing else. He’d never felt that way about anyone else. If he had to live a future, he’d want it to be with Evan. Connor would do anything with him: boil pasta or floss his teeth or watch the Great British Baking Show on repeat. Evan’s nervous habits were Connor’s daily routine, Evan hated them but Connor could live with every single thing for forever. Breathing the same air as Evan was as high as he’d ever been, which was a cliche thing to say but he wanted every single cliche with Evan. 

Too late, Murphy. 

_But if I died right now, Evan would have no one to talk to at school._

He’d live. He had Jared. 

_Jared? That assface? He doesn’t even care about Evan!_

He’d live.

_But he wouldn’t have anyone to sit with at lunch or a partner in Chemistry and you know how anxious he gets. If he had to find a new partner he’d fail the class and I’d ruin his life. You saw his face when you came in four minutes late that one day, the relief on his face was palpable from every inch of the classroom, he nearly cried when you slumped into the seat next to his._

Connor fell asleep with the bottle resting in his palm. 

Some things die and some things live on. We can’t know why, but Connor Murphy did not die that night, just like every night before.


	21. school is shit, but he isn’t

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you know when you have a crush and then they say like a bunch of bad things that morally irk you, 
> 
> and then you have to break up with them in your head?
> 
> let's all have a mental break up together.
> 
> grab your chocolate and pyjamas and tissues; we'll all listen to the heathers soundtrack and cry, mourning what we never really had. 
> 
> (i'm emotional, and for that I apologize, but enjoy the chapter:))

He fell asleep in front of Evan’s locker. 

When Connor looked up, he saw Evan unloading some books into his locker and shoving his coat onto the too-small metal hook. He couldn’t remember Evan arriving or saying ‘hi’ to him or anything. 

“I think you fell asleep,” Evan stated. 

“No shit, Sherlock,” Connor snapped. And he immediately regretted it. No shit, Sherlock - don’t be mean to Evan. “Sorry,” he added. 

“It’s n-no problem. I get it, I wish I could nap sometimes, too. At least now you won’t nap in Chem, right?”

“No promises,” Connor chuckled with his horace sleepy voice

Connor pushed back his sleeve and pushed himself off the ground. 

Evan’s eyes were trained on his arm. No - his hand. _Shit._

“What happened to your hand?” He asked. 

Valid question. Connor had wrapped it sloppily in hockey bandages and some of it was already falling apart, revealing his wreck of a hand with all its puffiness and bloody smears and splitting of the skin and the horrible, disgusting bruising. 

“Connor,” his voice dropped, “did - did you get into a fight with someone? Because - because, it’s - ”

“Don’t freak out, Hansen, it’s nothing.”

“It’s not _nothing_ , Connor. Your hand is - is really messed up, actually.”

Connor sighed and toyed with the fraying and peeling edges of the tape. He couldn’t look Evan in his watering eyes.

“Did you do this to yourself?’ Evan whispered.

“Uh, kind of,” Connor said. 

Evan’s eyes blew wild and his breath picked up. “H-how do you ‘kind of’ do it to yourself? What does that even mean? Connor?”

“Evan.”

He gulped.

“I - I punched a wall, so…”

“What kind of wall does _that_ to - to your fist?”

“A concrete one.”

“You punched a _concrete_ wall?” Evan, voice raised in shock, clutched at his backpack straps. 

Connor could feel heaviness building behind his eyes, he hung his head but that meant he could only see his abused hand which made him feel worse and then he had tears flowing down and out and down and down.

He had to learn to control this better, he did it so well in front of Larry. He never cried when he got yelled at anymore, even though he used to wail like a baby just a few years ago. It would take practise, but he couldn’t keep doing this. 

“Are you sure your hand wasn’t broken?” 

“No, it’s not broken, it didn’t swell like that. I, uh, used to do martial arts as a kid. So I know how not to break my hand when punching, it’s pretty easy, actually.”  
Connor rubbed his nose with his sleeve, hiding away the pitiful laugh that came out. 

“He-hey, it’s gonna be okay. Um…” Evan looked around. The hallway was empty, there were some classrooms that people could be in, but everything was quiet that early in the morning. 

Evan threw his arms over Connor’s shoulders and pulled him in, letting him rest his head on the shoulder of his polo. And Evan was warm; he hugged like he meant it. Connor could have his arms around Evan’s middle for the rest of forever. 

Connor closed his eyes and pushed the tears that sloshed in the rings onto his cheeks. Evan felt the droplets hit and pulled himself back the smallest amount so he could use Connor’s hood to wipe the wetness away. 

Connor chuckled, some phlegm crackling his voice. “Thanks.”

“N-no problem.”

“I’m a fucking mess.”

“You really aren’t, Connor,” Evan whispered. “You’re allowed to cry sometimes, especially when it’s something this bad.”

Connor nodded. 

“Seriously, if you feel that bad again… just - just call me. We can talk through it.”

“I didn’t want to… Evan, it’s oka-”

“You don’t have to explain yourself, but it’s not okay, Connor. You shouldn’t feel awful all of the time. Or at least feel awful alone.”

Which only made Connor’s face curdle up. He shoved it back into Evan’s shoulder. 

Connor felt alone a lot of the time. He felt awful alone, along with most other things in life. The whole world felt empty and alone. 

They were alone in the hallway.

Thank god. 

Evan’s hands were running soothing circles around his back. 

Thank god. 

_We shouldn’t feel awful alone._


	22. knock me out

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oops i forgot a chapter which is like the worst mistake ever
> 
> not that its integral to the storyline but i figure you would want more content 
> 
> thanks

You know those days when you can barely hold the tears at bay and you feel like if you speak one word, everything is going to come barrelling down the path you’ve opened? Connor was having one of those days. And he regretted leaving those pills untouched. Such a wasted opportunity. 

Sure, there was the brightness of having Chemistry class with Evan, but he only heard every second word Ms. Vanderbeck said and didn’t even write down the note. Evan took everything down with fury, even noting to photocopy the note for Connor later. 

Evan knew what it was like to have those days. You have to be certain places but your mind is everywhere but there. 

Connor looked like death, eyes sunken in and skin tinted with a purple Evan had never seen before; his hair hadn’t been washed and hung in a greasy mat to his head and neck, and Evan thinks that he was wearing the same outfit the day before. 

So he didn’t ask any questions: Bad days didn’t need to be made worse. Well, at least until they got back to the Murphy house, in the comfort of Connor’s bedroom. 

“Wh-what’s wrong? You look… awful,” Evan whispered. 

Connor shook his head slowly. “Nothing, Evan. Just a bad night. Nothing is wrong.”

“Is it the new medication? Because sometimes when I was bouncing around from medication to medication it messed me up kinda bad.”

He swallowed hard, Connor didn’t know how to lie to Evan: “I, uh, haven’t been taking them.”

“Connor,” Evan said with a serious tone that was new to the both of them. “You need to take them.”

Evan felt odd being so assertive, but this was Connor. He knew he didn’t listen to anyone other than him, that’s what Zoe said. He only ate when Evan told him to or slept properly when Evan told him. So this assertiveness was becoming more common. Evan… kind of liked it?

“They - they might suck at first but they help so much. You should take them.”

Walking over to the dresser where Evan had seen the medication days earlier, he picked up the still heavy container. “It says take one a day, with food. Why don’t you take, uh, take them while I’m here. You take one before we eat our snacks. Does - does that sound okay? I mean you don’t have to, I’m not your mom or anything, I just know they help and…”

Connor held out his palm. “Give me one.”

Evan shook out one of the small white capsules and placed it with the delicate tip of his fingers. 

Connor was just going to throw back the pill dry, but Evan had already rushed over to Connor’s bedside table where a line of dusty glasses of water sat, grabbing the newest one for him to sip. So Connor took the water, smiling sadly at Evan and swished the pill down his throat.

“Now we can eat because I know you didn’t eat anything at lunch.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Connor, I was - we were sitting together. I would know if you ate.”

Connor grabbed the two clementine oranges that he had taken out of the fruit bowl without really noticing it and peeled them on his comforter. They were sour and Connor felt how hungry he actually was. Those are the kinds of things you only notice when they’re staring you in the face or the mushy pulp is stuck in your teeth. 

“Uh,” Connor coughed wetly, “thanks for, uh, for this.”

“For helping my friend? It’s, um, it’s no problem.” The blush on Evan’s cheek blazed into his hairline. 

Connor wished he could kiss him there. Kiss his friend. 

“I hope you would… you would do the same for me if I needed it,” Evan said.

“Like knock the sense into you?”

“Y-yeah,” he laughed, “like knocking the sense into me every once and awhile.”

“It’d be my pleasure.”


	23. there is no red flag in ba sing se

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and you thought i couldn't make the chapters any shorter.

Connor had been sleeping more and more often. In school, in the hallway, when they got home. 

That was a red flag. 

Evan was very well-versed in red flags. There were hundreds of them for mental illness, most of them hard to detect. Dr. Sherman had told Evan these, drilled them into his head, so that he would know when he was getting bad again and would know to take better care of his mind. Independence was key, because your therapist wouldn’t always be there (Evan just wished Dr. Sherman wouldn’t have to be there at all). 

He knew excessive sleeping was a red flag. So was lack of sleep. 

And Evan wasn’t sure that Connor was sleeping at night: he would text at odd hours, show Evan the many sketches he’d done the day before. 

It seemed almost manic in its swings but Evan wasn’t out trying to diagnose anything; at the very least he was nosey. Very nosey. 

Evan tried, at the very least, to not look Connor in the eyes when he took his assessments. 

And Connor was snapping, a lot. He would get mad for the smallest things: his mom forgetting the juice box in his lunch, Evan asking him a question in Chemistry, Jared just sitting there. 

Jared himself was becoming a bit of a problem. 

Evan confided in him that Connor was acting strange. 

To which he replied: “Was he ever not on edge? The kid does drugs, dude, I’m surprised he hasn’t completely blown off the handle yet.”

“Jared, he doesn’t -” 

“Look, I’m not trying to be mean but you shouldn’t do that to yourself, man. He’s a messed up kid and it’s not like you’re his goddamn therapist.”


	24. another day, another drama drama

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter is dedicated to the novel 'to the lighthouse' by virgina woolf 
> 
> don't love the book but it's inspiring nevertheless

With a hefting hand, Connor lifted Evan back up to his feet, and knelt down to pick up the stray books that had fallen out of Evan’s unzipped backpack. Connor had just gotten to Evan’s locker for lunch, how could the day be this bad already? Fuck this, he thought, fuck everything. 

Connor eyed Jared and the scar of a laugh marking his face, the group of people watching Jared hand Evan his insecurities on a paper plate. Evan was frantically shoving things back in his bag, fixing his shirt, and dusting off his pants. 

“Shut the fuck up, Jared, or I’m going to fucking kill you,” Connor muttered under his breath. 

He didn’t look any more fazed, standing there with eyes wide and that fucking smirk on his face. He could say anything about him, call him ‘school shooter’ like he did every Monday at around eight thirty in the morning, too fucking early, call him whatever stupid names he wanted, but he didn’t come for Evan with that stupid shit. 

He couldn’t make fun of Evan for his stutter. He couldn’t make fun of Evan for his anxiety, Jared knew he can’t help it. You didn’t fucking do that.

“Did you want to try it again with that shit?”

Connor was trying not to raise his voice, Evan was already crying, he knew, and tugging on the sleeve of Connor’s hoodie to leave. Jared was a shit friend to Evan, if he could even call him that anymore. Why did Evan even bother with him?

But then he remembered that it was better to have _someone_ , even if they were rude, than to have no one. Connor remembered that well. But Connor wasn’t that shit, right? He tried to treat Evan… well. Now that he was thinking about it, Connor was the worst friend Evan could have. He forced him to talk on the phone, yelled at him, made him have dinner with his fucked up family. 

That stupid fucking smirk. “Fuck off before I crush your nose so hard you’ll be sniffing out of your asshole.”

With that spat between them, he pushed past, sure to hit Jared’s shoulder enough to jar him. 

“Then why are you running away, Murphy?” Jared piped. 

Connor whipped around fast enough to crack the sound barrier. “I have some things to lose, Kleinman, unlike your dead and alone ass.”

“Evan is my friend, what are you talking about?”

“Evan is too good to be friends with a fuckface like you, Kleinman. At least I know not to be an asshole to my friends, maybe you could take some fucking notes. I’m sure he doesn’t want to be friends with someone like you, who makes fun of him.”

“Don’t speak for him, Murphy.”

“And I’d know enough to not put him on the spot like this. If Evan wants to be my friend, that’s up to him. If he wants to stop hanging out with me, all he has to do is walk away, I don’t care. I like his company, which is more than you can say.”

Jared moved to protest, but Connor cut him off: “Don’t act like I don’t see you ignoring him everyday at lunch and making up excuses so you don’t have to hang out with him after school. I drive him home because he’s cool and I find what he says interesting, alright? So maybe you could appreciate that some more before you go around calling him your fucking friend.”

Connor didn’t wait, no matter what shit Kleinman was spewing behind him. Connor’s mouth was on fire and he didn’t even notice Evan following him until they made it into the bathroom. 

“Jesus Christ, you know I can’t take it with that shit,” Connor said, teeth clenched. He was ripping at the base of his hair; he didn’t want it to rip out, more like he wanted his whole head to come off. 

“Connor, it’ll be okay,” Evan’s voice was soft. Talking to a lion to stop its ramming at the cage. 

“He can’t just say shit like that.”

“I know, but it’s Jared, he-”

“He can’t be mean to you like that - it’s such bullshit. Such bullshit!”

Connor couldn’t handle himself. He would have punched something if he could afford it. So he just slammed himself into the wall, tearing a hand out and banging the palm on the cold tile wall. Anything that would hurt him. His head hit the wall hard enough to rattle his teeth. 

“Connor -” Evan grabbed at his arms, pulling them down and keeping a hard grip on them, no matter how much he protested. “ Connor, you can’t - you have to stop - you’re going to -”

Evan, with all his strength, was able to ease Connor down to the dingy bathroom floor. It wasn’t ideal but there was no other option, Evan tried to rationalize it to his infection-conscious brain. He leaned Connor into him. 

“You calm me down, I calm you down. This - this is the way it can work. It’s okay, Connor.”

He breathed loudly, cheek pressed into Evan’s shoulder. They didn’t speak for a while, both of them worn out from the moments of high energy that drained like a hose from the garden. Evan couldn’t work it all out in his head, not now, maybe not ever. He couldn’t understand Jared lashing out like that; his shoulder still ached where it had dove into the tiles. The anger of it all didn’t compute. So all Evan could do was hold Connor like this, keeping his chest pressed against his own, as if he could siphon some calmness over this bond. 

Everything was getting worse. Connor was getting worse. Evan didn’t know what to do, there was no one he could go to, no ‘adult’ trusted, no one. 

And, not for the first time in a long time, the two of them were stranded. Stranded somewhere the tide could ebb at them for hours and days until the inevitable pull to the darkness of the sea.


	25. bathroom tiles are uncomfortable

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i only post chapters when im at the library now
> 
> i just don't want to read anymore about Louis XIV
> 
>  
> 
> suggested listening for this chapter is the song in a week by hozier

“Evan, where are you?” Connor called into the house. 

His heart ran away from him as he looked for light beaming into the darkened space, or from under a crack in the door. He heard sobbing coming from somewhere. He cursed at himself for not knowing Evan’s house well enough to see it in the dark. 

Connor was afraid of what was happening. He was sitting in his room only maybe ten minutes ago, trying to write _something_ for his English essay, but not really knowing what happened in _King Lear,_ other than that a lot of people had died for some reason, the king had gone crazy (undeniably relatable), and there was a pretty good fool. So he was thinking about the fool’s jokes when his phone nearly vibrated itself off of his nightstand with a call - from Evan. Evan never called him without texting first - big red flag. Connor’s heart fell fifty stories down through his stomach. Was he dead and his mom was calling his number so he would know? Was he dying and this was his last message? God, he thought about Evan dying a lot - too much. He answered the phone with a quiet: “Hello?”

But there was just crying on the other end, then Evan choked out, “Connor? I nee-need you... I-I’m sorry… I….”

Everything jumbled into sobs then. 

“Evan? What’s going on? Are you alone?” He asked. He’d started shaking. 

“Uh, yeah… Mom’s at - at work… I’m so sorry. Panic, uh, uh, panic attack. Bad one. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry, Evan. I’ll be over as fast as I can. Just try to… breathe?” Connor knew jack shit about talking people through panic attacks. _Who knows what works for literally everybody else?_ “Everything will be just fine, you’re not going to die. It’ll be over soon and I’ll be there, just try to think about that. Okay?”

“Okay,” Evan murmured. 

Connor hung up the phone, shoving it into his hoodie pocket and throwing on his jeans. In the dimness of a house where everyone had gone to bed, he left a note on the kitchen counter, saying that Evan needed him and that he’d be back soon, that they could text him if they needed him. _That should do,_ thought Connor. _If it doesn’t, then fuck them. Evan is more important than any of them._

And with the minimal traffic at midnight, Connor got to Evan’s house in about eight minutes, judging by the clock on Connor’s car and the time on Evan’s stove.  
He walked in and down one of the hallways, where he knew the bedrooms were, and saw the light coming from the bathroom. Opening the door took a breath of courage. 

Evan was crumpled on the floor, with his back up against the bathtub and his hands on his face, silently crying into his knees. He was so curled up, his crying was muffled. And his breathing was so loud. So loud. And so fast. 

“Evan, it’s Connor.” He used his softest voice. “I’m here…”

Connor crouched down to Evan’s level, reaching out for his hands. Nothing on him budged. 

“Can I… can I touch you? Is - are you…?” Connor watched Evan nod his head into his knees, more like just rubbing his forehead into his jeans. 

“It’s okay….” He ran a hand through Evan’s hair, linking their fingers when he came back around. Evan’s red, bloodshot eyes looked up at him wearily. “You’re okay…”

But Evan kept whining out his tears, hiccuping and panting. His face was pale with splotches of red in his lower cheeks. He became smaller like this, Connor felt like he could hold him in the palm of his hand. Still doesn’t mean he knew what to do. Except for what he thought worked for him, what had worked _before_. 

“Evan, do you take medication for this?” He asked. “Like, do you have something that calms you down?”

Evan nodded and stared up at the medicine cabinet. 

Connor stood, opened the cabinet door, and started rifling through the different bottles, checking their labels. Some of them had other names on them, but he read the full labels for ones labeled HANSEN, EVAN JAMES until he found one labeled Xanax and had the instructions: TAKE TWO TABLETS. 

In his haste to get the child-proof container open, pills went flying everywhere. “Shit!” Connor shouted under his breath. 

From what was left in the bottle, Connor shook out two pills and ran into the kitchen, grabbing a glass from a tall cupboard and turning on the tap, the handle shoved all the way to the cold side. Filling it up seemed to take an hour. He took in two breaths, counting: _one, two, three, four._ Out: _one, two, three, four_. Evan’s crying was making his hands shake. He didn’t want to spill the water. 

Walking into the bathroom slowly, he grabbed Evan’s hand and dropped the pills in his palm, which was sweaty and made the pills stutter while rolling past the base of his fingers.  
Evan wanted to say something, but he didn’t know what. All that came out was: “I - I h-hate this-s so much. I - I wanna d-die. God, can it b-be over. Pl - Please, please, p-please...”

So Connor knelt down and put a hand solidly on his back, shushing him. Not that _Connor_ knew anything about wanting to die or thinking he was going to die. Not that Evan saying those words shattered his bones, jabbing shards into every soft part of his body. 

Connor rubbed Evan’s back as he placed the pills on his tongue and swished them down with a gulp of water. Connor held Evan’s hand as they breathed together. Connor brought Evan a can of ginger ale when he told him he felt like he was going to throw up. Throwing up would not have been the best thing, it meant Connor would have had to scrape up some pills from the floor so he could take another two. That was okay. He could handle that. He just wanted Evan to stop crying. 

The Xanax always took the edge off; it made the world outside stop shuddering and pulled the weight of doom off his back. Evan listened for Connor’s breathing, he was right next to him and his chest was pressing into his elbow, hand holding his. He tried to match it, no matter how much it made him hiccup. He sipped on his ginger ale. He could still vomit if he tried. Connor’s hand went up and down his back, steady in rhythm, it made his back warm. 

It stopped feeling like he was drowning, after a while. His chest stopped seizing in pain and his head stopped buzzing and his breath came back to him. He just…. felt exhausted.  
Evan’s head slumped back, lulled to the side, looking at Connor’s stressed eyes. They were red and glassy, too. Evan knew he looked like shit, he felt like shit.

“Tired?” Connor asked. He knew it sounded stupid. Obviously.

So Evan nodded. 

“Do you want to go lie down?”

Evan nodded again. “On the couch.”

“Okay, here - “ Connor shifted the hand on Evan’s back, bringing it under his armpit. “I’ll help you up in three… two… one.”

Evan let himself he carried upright by Connor, barely feeling his legs and knowing Connor’s other hand was holding him steady. 

They walked, step by single step, until Evan was in front of the couch and his knees gave out, throwing him onto the creaking couch cushions. Connor braced him on the way down, pulling out the pillow so he could lay his head down on the armrest. 

“Is that okay? Are you warm? Cold?”

“Cold. T-the bathroom tiles were cold,” Evan laughed. He wasn’t sure why. Probably the adrenaline.

“‘Course,” said Connor. He grabbed the thick, woolen blanket off of the back of the couch and opened it over Evan, tucking the end of it under his feet. “Do you want something to eat? More to drink? I’ll grab your water and ginger ale from the bathroom…”

“Uh… maybe some crackers.”

“Crackers, right. I’ll get those…”

Connor still didn’t know the Hansen’s house that well. He looked through almost every cabinet before finding a sleeve of saltines that he took by the twisted end, then ran back to the bathroom to get the two glasses. 

He set everything down on the coffee table, unwrapping the crackers a bit more, looking down at Evan’s closed eyes and clenched fists. 

Connor hummed a bit, scratching his head like he was thinking but he didn’t know what to think. Evan wanted to sleep. And he was hungry. It was midnight. And everything felt dark.  
“I - I’m gonna - are you going to be okay here?” Connor asked.

Evan clutched his hand. “Don’t leave,” he said in his most whiny voice. He didn’t want to seem needy but he needed Connor. He was going to be alone until seven in the morning.  
And the house was too dark and empty and he had too many thoughts floating around him. He didn’t trust himself to be alone. He didn’t want to die like this. 

“Okay, I can stay. I can stay tonight. I should… text my mom.”

“Is it okay with your parents?” Evan’s voice became worried.

“It’s cool. We’ve… actually been on okay terms recently.”

Which was true, at least in as far as Cynthia was his ‘parents’. Connor had been going to school everyday (because of Evan), getting home on time (because of Evan), and hanging out with friends that don’t smoke weed (which was, of course, Evan): all of her favourite Connor activities. So he whipped out his phone and wrote his mom a text:

**Connor** : i’m staying over at evan’s tonight, we got pizza and we’re watching a movie. i’ll be back sometime tomorrow morning.

He hoped that would do, but his mom’s expectations were low, like, 6 inches off the ground low. That would probably be enough for her. 

Perfect. Okay. Now he needed to find somewhere to sleep. 

He could take one of the beds, but he didn’t want to be so far from Evan. Shrugging, he pushed the coffee table over a couple feet, placed the glasses and other stuff over onto the side table. Tentatively finding his way into Evan’s bedroom, he took the comforter off the bed and stole the pillow and throw blanket. 

Stuffing the comforter between the couch and the table, he set the pillow at the top of it, by Evan’s head and tossed the blanket down, too. He felt uncomfortable, then he realized _of course,/em >, he’s still wearing all of his outside gear - fucking coat and shit. So Connor untied his boots and kicked them off, revealing his very orange, very pumpkin-y feet. _Shit,__ he forgot he was wearing his boot socks. Whatever, he figured Evan wouldn’t be the one to make fun of him. He took off his hoodie and jean vest, throwing them onto a chair on the other side of the couch. 

Then he saw Evan. His hands were on his eyes again, rubbing them with the heels of his palms. His cheeks were really red. Connor stalled, not quite knowing what to do. Didn’t want to sleep with Evan upset even though he could pass out standing up. Didn’t want to dote over him like his mom, when he’s not his mom by a long shot. Connor felt his anxiety rising up like bile. It tasted a lot like anger. That scared him. 

So he grabbed the hoodie and, hesitating, spread it over Evan’s stomach so he could feel it on his neck. 

His eyes shot open, feeling the new weight on his body and seeing Connor standing over him. The hoodie smelled like him, like vanilla and campfire wood and a little skunky from the weed that never quite washed out. Evan liked it, though. His smell was comforting, he wanted to sleep next to Connor but he didn’t want to weird him out. It would weird him out, right? They were friends. Guy friends didn’t do that, they didn’t cuddle each other. 

There was this sinking disappointment in his chest, everything tight. 

“Is that okay?” Connor asked. “The hoodie? I thought it might-”

“It’s nice, Connor. Thank you,” Evan whispered back, peeking his eyes up. 

He nodded. Connor tucked his hair behind his ears and climbed onto the comforter. The ground was unbelievably hard, it jutted into the bones in his back and banged up his knees. 

Evan spoke into the darkness of the living room: “Thank you, Connor.”

_I’d do anything for you, Ev,_ he thought. But that sounded like something someone said before they kissed. So he didn’t say anything. He wanted to kiss Evan, he really did. But that would make things weird, he knew it would. 

He reached up and took Evan’s hand, squeezing it.

* * *

Heidi came home when the sun was coming in through the gaps between the blinds. She dropped her stuff by the coat rack, as per usual, then came into the living room.

She saw Evan first, walking over to run a hand through his hair, he must’ve had a rough night if he was sleeping on the couch. Then she almost tripped over a pair of huge orange feet and saw Connor lying face down on the floor next to the couch. She recognized him from Evan’s yearbook - she’d known the Murphy’s for quite some time. 

How long had he been here? All night? His poor back, his poor head - poor babies, the both of them. 

Evan stirred when she touched his forehead. 

“Hey,” she said quietly, “is everything okay here?”

“Oh, um, I, uh, was feeling bad last night. Connor came over and…” Evan’s breathing picked up, making him wheeze. 

“It’s okay, sweetie, I’m glad he looked after you. But you know you can call me if you need me, right?”

“Yeah - yeah, of course I know, it’s just that Connor offered and I didn’t want to bother you if he didn’t mind, I mean, it wasn’t that bad…”

She leaned down and kissed his cheeks. “I love you, you know that right?”

“Yeah, love you, too, Mom.”

Heidi glanced down at Connor and the way his face slumped into Evan’s comforter on the ground, making every second rise of his chest a snore, and she smiled a little. 

“Do Connor’s parents know he’s here?” She asked. 

“I’m not sure,” Evan replied. 

“I’ll give his mom a call -”

“You know his mom?” Evan was hit with bewilderment that he wasn’t sure if it was sleep-related or pure shock. 

“Yeah, met her a while ago,” Heidi brushed it off. “Do me a favour and try not to wake him, he looks like needs the sleep, walking around like a zombie sometimes.”

“Sure, yeah, I’ll do that. I won’t wake him up.”

“And you get some sleep, too, sweetie. There’s waffles in the freezer for breakfast for the two of you, but please get some rest. I’ll be upstairs if you need me.”

“Right, thanks, Mom. I love you.”

She smiled even brighter, pressing another kiss to his forehead. “Love you, too. But now - sleep.”

So Evan turned over as Heidi climbed the squeaky steps. He reached down and gently combed his fingers through the ends of Connor’s curls a couple of times. He shifted in his blankets, sighing peacefully. 

“Thank you, Connor,” he whispered, absentmindedly. “You’re a bit of a hero now.”

He didn’t think Connor heard, but he did. And he felt like kissing him right then and there but they both needed to sleep. The thought of moving any part of his body felt like too much. But he could rest now, knowing a little bit more of what Evan thought of him, _how_ Evan thought of him. 

He would kiss that boy one day, when he was ready. 

Connor Murphy was going to kiss the fuck out of Evan Hansen. One day.


	26. sleeping beauty

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am trying very hard to not mess up the order of the chapters but all of my writing is the most messy. Just So Messy. 
> 
>  
> 
> suggested listening for this chapter is called get some rest.
> 
> just sleep some more, okay? it's good for you.

The bags under Connor’s eyes pressed less into his face than he was used to. He kept running his fingers under his eyes, feeling their puffy smoothness. Or maybe they weren’t puffy, just normal. For normal people. 

He came into the kitchen with his hoodie open. Evan had insisted he take it with him; Connor had tried to leave it behind. He was there, he saw the settling of Evan’s eyelids when the hoodie fell on him, he snuggled it in, it let him sleep. Connor just wanted Evan to sleep, to rest, to be calm. Fuck, he was so weird these days. All the edges inside of him had dulled. Maybe it _was_ the new antidepressants he was on. Maybe it was Evan. He hoped it was both. 

He had finally done it, finally cared about someone else other than himself. Guess he wasn’t a total selfish asshole. Some of the time. 

“You know you can tell me the truth, right, Connor?” His mom asked as soon as he passed the counter she was working at, chopping… celery? Connor thought it was celery. She didn’t even look up at him. Serious situation? Probably.

Connor swallowed hard. “What do you mean?”

“That…” Cynthia sighed, “you were over at Evan’s because he was having a rough night and _not_ because you two were watching a movie.”

“How did y-?”

“Evan’s mom called me earlier this morning.”

Connor fiddled with the zipper of his hoodie. The anger wanted to pounce and it lurched inside him. “I, uh, didn’t want you to worry. He didn’t want his mom to have to leave her shift again, so he called me and I knew if I told you then you would worry and then tell his mom. It was fine, I would have called you if it got really bad.”

Cynthia's eyes searched him for a minute. This was one of the more common calm conversation she’d had with her son this week. The new meds must have been working, something was working. He didn’t look high. Just well-rested, and that made her want to cry. 

“Is that okay?” He asked. “Sorry for lying.”

“It’s… fine. You know I’d prefer if you boys got an adult involved if anything happens, anything at all, but I’m glad you were there for your friend. Evan’s a good kid, it’s really unfortunate that those kinds of things happen to him.”

“Yeah.” _You can’t even imagine_ , Connor wanted to add. 

He bit the soft skin inside his mouth.


	27. good content™

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> people on my res floor keep slamming their doors for some goddamn reason
> 
> but enjoy this sweet chapter 
> 
> i wrote it to sop up my tears

Evan was very concerned about spilling nail polish, a fear he hadn’t realized until that afternoon. As per usual, Connor drove Evan back to the Murphy’s house and they looted the kitchen for snacks because Evan made Connor eat and Connor made Evan eat, then camped up in Connor’s room doing _something_ until either Evan had to go home for dinner or his mom texted him or until they were both called down to eat what Cynthia had made for the family, plus Evan (and whenever Evan ate there, he always made sure that Connor and him cleaned up and did the dishes so Mrs. Murphy could watch the evening news, no matter how much Connor grumbled and complained the first few times; now he just did it because it made Evan happy). 

But that day, two fingers of Connor’s nail polish had fallen off during school so they needed repainting. And he was making Evan do them. 

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” Evan repeated for the hundredth time. 

“You’re doing perfectly fine, Evan,” Connor said. Even though he was getting a thick layer of polish of either side of his finger and definitely flooding the cuticles, something Connor would clean up after Evan switched hands. “Don’t worry so much.”

Evan chuckled nervously. “That’s what they all say.”

“Sorry, that was a douchey thing to say. I didn’t mean it... like that.” Connor threw his free hand up to his forehead and pulled it down over his eyes. 

Maybe it was a douchey thing to say, but Evan didn’t seem to mind. At least Connor was honest and said that he wasn’t actually thinking that; most people were genuine when they told him to stop worrying too much. Like he had a choice. He didn’t know what people thought. At least Connor understood. 

“Let this coat dry,” Connor said, his voice soft. 

So Evan put the cap of the nail polish bottle back on and unfurled his legs so he could get more comfortable. This sitting on the floor business was getting kind of annoying and his butt went numb all the time and gave his legs pins and needles, but he’d be anywhere if it was with Connor. Which was a weird thing to say. He - didn’t have a _crush_ on _Connor Murphy_ , they were just good friends - best friends, maybe. He did not love _Connor Murphy_. But his heart picked up every time they got close and his stomach did flip flops when he got to hold his abnormally cold hand to put the polish on each finger and nervous butterflies filled his chest whenever Connor looked at him or they caught each other’s eyes or Connor asked Evan to hang out or that time that Connor held the car door for Evan to get in, but that was only because Evan was carrying extra books for Jared for some reason, right? He did not have a crush on Connor. _Connor Murphy_ would never like Evan Hansen back, he was sure of it. _Connor Murphy_ had cool weed boyfriends who could order their own pizza and actually hold quality conversations - they didn’t break down into emotional fragments every time they were left alone for too long. Evan Hansen was a mess. Connor didn’t deserve a mess. He needed someone who could support him, someone who understood. 

And maybe Evan understood. 

And maybe he did have a crush on Connor.

Happy?


	28. i hate everyone but you

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> suggested listening for this chapter is the song O Helga Natt by Nils Bech
> 
> which is a shoutout to all my skam fans out there 
> 
> i am one of you
> 
> (fun fact: i did a philosophy/tok presentation on skam in high school and it saved my grade in that class even though my teacher was a huge dick, thanks for coming to my ted talk)

“Nonononononono no, you’ll hate me.” Evan spluttered through each tear as they rolled down his cheeks and plunked onto his jeans.

He almost didn’t hear Connor say: “No, I really won’t, Evan.”

“I - I just - I-”

“Hey, breathe.” Connor’s hand squeezed his. 

“I felt so alone and I couldn’t find another f-foothold and I just thought ‘oh, is this my sign, you know?’ to just - to just -”

“It’s okay.”

“- for me to just, let go, and…”

And he crumpled into Connor’s upper arm, wetting the crook of his elbow and letting the snot drip into his mouth. He was a mess. That made him cry harder. He can’t believe Connor’s seen him cry so many times. Why was he such a loser? Connor was never ever going to like him back. That made him cry harder. So Connor pulled Evan’s head farther into his chest and looked sort of off into the distance so he could keep his composure. Both of them sobbing didn’t right any wrongs. 

“I just did, Connor,” he mumbled into the hoodie. “I just let go, I didn’t even think about it, I just let go, I just let go… I just….”

“You’re fine, Ev. You know that I understand, right? I do. I could never hate you for that.” Connor sighed, his chest shuddering under stress. “A few weeks ago, and I’ve had this plan more than once,” he said, which made his voice rockier, “I stole pills from the medicine cabinet, they were my mom’s Tylenol with codeine that they gave her when she got her gallbladder removed a while ago but they’re still good and there are still a bunch of them left. I… I took them to school. I planned on getting a ride in from Zoe and then saying goodbye and walking into the woods behind the school and offing myself back there so no one would ever find me. 

“But then I thought the stupidest thing, I thought, ‘If I don’t show up to chemistry class that poor Hansen kid is gonna be missing his partner and he’s going to have a freaking anxiety attack and then he’s going to blame me for it and then make my family worried enough to look for me.”

And Evan remembered that day. Now that Connor brings it to life like that. It was an oddly cool morning, even for the end of September, and Evan was wearing his new jacket and old sneakers brought out of the closet because there was finally a reason to change his wardrobe, weather that left the ground aromatic and the leaves crisp. He remembered that chemistry class because Connor looked so _awful_ like he hadn’t slept in days (which was probably true) and wanted to storm right out the room every time Ms. Vanderbeck asked them to measure out a chemical or stir the contents of the beaker. But he stayed there with Evan, and he remembered it was nice not to have to look around for his lab partner and then raise his hand and stammer out to Ms. Vanderbeck that his partner wasn’t there and then she would’ve had him paired with another group of people he didn’t know, where he’d sit beside them and just watch the experiment. He thanked Connor endlessly in his mind. It occurs to him that he probably should’ve done that out loud. Maybe it would have made a difference. 

For some reason, that made him chuckle a little. It felt odd in the thickness of his throat. “I’m s-so stupid, I should have noticed. I’m sorry it was like that.”

“It’s okay, sometimes it’s the stupid things that keep you alive,” he said. 

“I keep you alive?”

And that made Connor smile. He looked up at the ceiling, like the lights didn’t hurt his eyes. “I said sometimes, Hansen, don’t get ahead of yourself.”

Evan nestled himself tighter to Connor’s middle, covering the whole width of his back with his arms, and then some. Connor’s arms draped over Evan’s shoulders and kept him there, feeling the cover like shelter. Connor had never really been hugged like this before, or at least not recently. He didn’t let people touch him much, only Cynthia pushed his boundaries on that, but even so, no one felt as nice there as Evan. 

Okay, so Evan did keep him alive. But that’s a lot to put onto someone who breaks down with anxiety. That’s for Evan to find out on his own, announcing it makes it official and official things break backs and break necks, and Evan’s broken arm seemed like enough for now.


	29. hey, bare arm, that’s cool

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> get spooky y'all
> 
> or don't
> 
> it's really up to you

It was warm the morning Connor came to school and noticed that Evan’s cast was gone. Or, he didn’t really notice right away, but there was definitely something different about him. 

The morning was oddly warm; he was sweating in his black jean jacket. 

“Your… arm.” Connor said, pointing at Evan’s skin. 

“My - my arm?” Evan asked. 

“No cast.”

Evan held out his arm, like he too was just noticing the missing piece of plaster. “I, uh, got it taken off last night.”

“Does it still hurt?”

“Um, not really, The skin is kind of sensitive because it was, um, irritated when the gauze was on it, e-especially at the end when it was all dried out and kind of… scratchy.”

Connor nodded. “You still want to hang out after school?”

“Yeah - yeah, why not?”

“I, uh, don’t know. Just checking,” he sighed. “What did you want to do?”

“Connor.” Evan looked at him seriously, eyes dipped downwards. “Tonight is Halloween. Did you forget? You said you wanted me to come over so I could answer the door with you because your parents are out for the night… remember?"

Of course. Now he could make sense of the fact that there were people in costumes around him and everyone at this goddamn school seemed to have cranked up their energy for the day. He ran his hands over his face. “Right, right, I remember.”

He wondered if it was the medication, but memory loss wasn’t listed as one of the side-effects. So if it wasn’t the medication, it was the depression. Clear as that. 

“Should - should we get some discounted candy to eat?” 

Connor smiled. “Hell fucking yeah, Evan. I want to gorge myself on stupid Halloween candy for one night only.”

“Sounds like a plan.” 

* * *

Connor groaned in time with the doorbell. 

They were set up in the Murphy’s front living room, which Larry insisted upon calling a ‘parlour’, the dumbest thing Connor had ever heard in his whole godforsaken life. They were sharing a blanket, sitting on the leather couch and watching The Nightmare Before Christmas (it’s a digestible one hour and sixteen minutes long and the only ‘horror’ movie either of them really wanted to watch). 

Having the house to themselves felt scandalous, Connor was almost never allowed to be home alone (his family would always arrange for someone to stay with him, like they were worried he was going to off himself the minute he was left to his own devices so Cynthia would stay behind on the excuse that she was tired or they just dropped him off with his grandma all summer so they could do stuff and not have to deal with his shit), but that’s what gaining back trust gets you, right? This was not a rhetorical question, Connor had no idea. 

“You’re gonna get it? ‘Cause I can if you-”

“Nah, it’s fine,” Connor said. 

Getting up was the hardest part, his feet were shocked by the cold of the hardwood. He didn’t mind the kids really, didn’t love the screaming and giggling (because it always felt a little personal), but he loved their costumes. Especially the shy ones. They reminded Connor of himself. Just a little bit. And he was entirely impartial to Spidermans.  
He peeked through the distorted glass of the front door at the kids on his porch, seeing their nervous little hands holding up candy buckets, as well as the shadow of a parent waiting in the driveway. 

Making sure to open the door subtly, Connor grabbed the bowl they had set out on a little folding table and thus began the barrage of ‘trick or treat’, that Connor had come to know as more of a chant than a question. So he complimented their costumes and dumped a handful of candy into each of their buckets, then they ran off back down the steps and out to the sidewalk. 

He would do this about another hundred times this evening - they lived in a busy neighbourhood. 

Halloween was maybe Connor’s least favourite holiday, or at least he didn’t find anything fun about it. He’d never gone to a party or really dressed up after the age of twelve. Correction: he’d never been invited to a party. And he guessed Evan hadn’t either. 

“What was it this time?” Evan asked. It seemed as though he had stolen even _more_ of the blanket. 

“Elsa and a firefighter.”

“Another Elsa?”

“Don’t think they’re ever going to let that one die.”

Connor threw himself back on the couch, always forgetting not to get too comfortable. Evan’s knee bumped into his and Connor smirked. It burned where they touched. He kept his leg there. Nothing more. He was afraid he was going to go too far, overstep a boundary and then Evan would never want to see him again. He was so afraid. He knew too much about Evan now.

Sometimes when he looked at him he tried to imagine Evan lying on the forest floor. He fell. He fell and no one heard him. Connor tried to remember what he was doing during the summer when Evan would have fallen. He was probably asleep. Or high. Or mad. And Evan was just lying there, ready for the wolves to get him or the leaves to envelop his body as a final rest. It felt like an invasion of privacy. Connor was peeping where he wasn’t supposed to be, slimy with that childlike guilt.

Evan didn’t move his own leg, or shift, or anything, so Connor settled into the warmth. 

Just until the next doorbell rang.


	30. horses' legs are actually fingers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey everyone
> 
> sorry i left for so long
> 
> but its reading week so i thought i would just follow the trend of doing absolutely nothing of any worth
> 
> i still luv u though
> 
> enjoy this chapter :)

Evan got a text during Calculus class:

**Connor** : i’ll be in the parking lot after school meet me there

But Evan didn’t reply. 

When he spotted the car in the full lot, following out the rest of the seniors, there was already smoke lurching from the driver’s side window. 

“Have you been out here all day?” Evan asked over the music. 

“Hm?”

“Did you go to any other classes besides Chemistry?”

“What? Oh, no. I didn’t,” Connor said. 

Because Connor spent first period in a bathroom stall, bubbling his blood above the surface, then joined Evan for Chemistry. And after lunch, nothing seemed worth doing anymore, so he got into his car. 

He drove to the gas station and picked up a new pack of cigarettes. That’s what you’re supposed to use fake IDs for, right? His old ones felt too old. 

The pack was still sitting open in the cupholder. 

Evan didn’t really know what to do. There was no scolding Connor, his eyes glinted with something that might nip at Evan’s throat if he tried. 

“Did you sleep last night?”

No, Connor didn’t, for your information. 

It was about two A.M. when he’d had it with lying, sweaty and uncomfortable, in his bed. Pressing on his mind, he couldn't get rid of him. _Him. Him. Him._

Jacking off in anger wasn’t really something Connor had experienced before. 

_Him. Him. Him._

It wouldn’t leave him alone. 

There was a while where he just stood in the bathroom and cried in front of the mirror, letting all of his wrinkles shine in the clinical light. You never look uglier than in the early hours of the morning in a bathroom mirror. Cold water didn’t wash anything away. 

Connor just shook his head. 

“Why don’t you…? You should get in the passenger seat,” Evan declared. 

“What? Why?”

“You shouldn’t be driving like this.”

“And you think you should?”

“I’m a fine driver, Connor, I just don’t like it. My license is for emergencies.”

Evan was already choking on his words, they wouldn’t come out right, and it made it hard to sound convincing. 

“Please, just hop over to the passenger side and we can go home.”

It took Connor two draws of his cigarette to respond, not even saying a word, popping the door open and climbing out of his seat. 

That didn’t help Evan’s heart rate. 

Driving was for emergencies, for trips to the hospital and… and not much else. That’s how he got his license; he kept on thinking that this was in case his mom got sick and needed to be driven to the hospital. Just kept repeating that. 

He never thought he’d be in this place, driving an unfit Connor Murphy to his house, rounding the corners with more caution than Connor would have afforded so that they could get there without an accident. Here Evan was, doing his best to make sure that two suicidal kids made it home safe. 

And Connor wasn’t helping any, the most terrifying part of it all was that his leg didn’t stop shaking the whole time and he didn’t speak. Neither of them spoke, just drove in silence.

When Evan finally pulled them into the driveway, slow and steady, he got out of the car and grabbed both of their backpacks from the backseat. Connor didn’t move. 

So Evan opened his door for him. 

And there he found that tear tracks had made their way down and down and down into the strings of his hoodie.

“I’m sorry, this is so fucking stupid,” Connor whispered. “I just…”

“It’s not stupid.”

Evan crushed Connor into his shoulder, dropping the bags on the ground to fully envelop him. One arm by two arms until it went away. 

Sometimes there’s only so much you can do, only so much. The two of you can get snacks and lie in bed and talk or sit in the silence you share, you can do all of this, pretending that you don’t love him. Maybe this is what it is to love him. This is what it all amounts to. Connor didn’t need to kiss him or touch him or have him all to himself; if he never got around to confessing anything to Evan maybe they could have this, as friends. That’s what he wanted all along, right? A friend? Well, here he is, Evan Hansen, possibly the best boy you’ve ever seen, ever known, and too many wrong moves will drive him away. And that’s if you’re not already driving him away. 

So you lie in bed and that’s enough. You are the two of you, together, and that’s enough. 

Evan moved his head into Connor’s hood by accident, wrinkling his nose at the old smoke smell. “Did you want to talk about today?”

“What about it?”

“I don’t know, I just figured… you could tell me, I wouldn’t judge. Talking always helps. And smoking that much kinda sucks.”

Connor scoffed. “It’s not so bad, Hansen, you’re just chicken.”

“I’m not Connor, I don’t like lung cancer, that doesn’t make me chicken.” Evan’s hand reached out for his, pulling at his fingers, playing with the soft bits of skin. “What’s wrong, Connor?”

He sighed. “It’s nothing….”

They couldn’t look each other in the eyes. Evan kept locked on his fingers, they were enchantingly long, like freakishly long. It felt weird to focus on anything else. “It’s never nothing,” Evan said. 

“Seriously, don’t worry about it.” Connor was trying to keep his voice steady.

“Okay.”

There was nothing that drove Connor as crazy as Evan with control over his hand; that was the whole reason they were in this situation. If Evan were to have let go of Connor’s hand, everything would have unravelled and maybe things would be different. It wouldn’t be better, or perhaps worse, but Evan’s hand felt so nice on his and it made Connor want to run to the bathroom and pull on the roots of his hair, screaming and crying. The frustration of it all was going to kill him. Over and over and over again. 

Wasn’t there some old fable that said a secret held inside for too long will rot your insides and wither you away? It hadn’t even been a time worth noting but Connor could’ve sworn there was something eating at him. He wouldn’t last long, not this way. 

Evan wondered when things might be normal again. Or if they would ever feel normal. Maybe Evan would spend his whole life making sure Connor was okay, checking on him, keeping him alive and well, perhaps in fifteen years Evan would be like his mom, but instead of making meals for a teenager while away on a night shift it would be bringing dinner to a thirty-three year old to make sure he ate something that day. He found it funny that he just assumed he’d be in Connor’s life in fifteen years. Or that they’d both be alive in fifteen years. 

Blind hope was a powerful thing.


	31. *insert a the 1975 lyric that the teens love*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i feel like confessing something in a car is a distinctly gay activity
> 
> p.s. thanks so so much for your nice comments :)

The first snowfall of the year came fast and didn’t stay long, making the roads wet and the day shorter. Evan just wanted to pull his covers back over his eyes and sleep for a few more hours when he saw the white rooftops outside. He had to break out his boots from the closet, brushing off the dust. 

When Connor pulled into his driveway Evan was already waiting outside. He was trying to convince himself that he liked the snow, the wet feeling in his toes and the burn on the tip of his nose. Those were the kind of things that you did when you were afraid of seasonal affective disorder. Absolutely a hazard for Evan that came with its own set of red flags and warning signs. 

“Hey,” Evan said, stepping into the car and tossing his backpack in the backseat like he always did. 

Like he always did. 

Connor just nodded his head. 

“Cat got your tongue?” Evan laughed lightly. 

Nothing. 

“Connor, can you say something? So I know you’re okay?”

His mind was racing back and forth. Back and around and up and down. Connor couldn’t take this much longer. He parked the car on the side of the road, on a street not far from Evan’s house. 

And Evan’s voice was curling into the tears that were building in his throat. “What’s wrong? You won’t talk to me or even look at me. Did I do something wrong? Because if I did something wrong I’m -”

“Stop, Evan.”

The silence went stale in the air, heat still pumping through the vents that fogged up all the windows. 

“What did I do, Connor?” Evan whispered. “‘Cause if you don’t want to be friends anymore I understand, I’d just like to know what I did.”

_Some cruel torture, Connor,_ he thought, _you drive the kid insane with your fucking messed up behaviour. Just tell him. Tell him. Tell him._

“You didn’t do anything.” Connor’s voice had gone rough, like he’d been screaming for hours. “Don’t… don’t feel bad.”

_Like that’s going to do anything._

Connor leaned his head against the steering wheel with his hair curtaining his face, trying to think about how to word the next part. 

Evan probably thought he’d finally lost it and dove off the deep end. Once and for all. 

“I like you,” he said. 

“Oh,” Evan breathed. “Like, how? Like _like-like_ or…?

“Yes, Evan,” Connor threw himself back against the seat, hands now pressed against his eyes, rubbing them back into his skull. “We’re in middle school and I like-like you like a lot.”

“Oh, okay.”

There was a part of Connor that was so pissed off that this was the way things ended up. Declarations of undying love should be dramatic and passionate and full of tears, something to tell stories of that they’ll make movies out of because love should be grand. Grand. This part of him wanted Evan to do more than accept it, even if it was a graceful exit without returning the feelings. What drama did he want? He couldn’t even look Evan in the eyes while doing it. 

“I just thought you should know, I felt like it was weird that you didn’t know. I didn’t want to… to make you hang out with me if it was weird.”

“You’re allowed to like people, Connor. It’s-it’s only weird if you make it weird.”

He couldn’t breathe. The movements in Evan’s chest were small and nearly invisible; it couldn’t be healthy. There were pros and cons to this, right? If he told him - if he told him, _too_ \- then they might go somewhere. The two of them. Together. Evan wasn’t sure if he should put that in the pros or cons column. The moment was moving too fast: _they might hug, they might kiss, they might go on dates together, they might -_ “I like you, too.”

“It’s okay, Evan, don’t make it weird. You don’t have to make me feel better and it’s just making it weird.”

“I’m not trying to make it weird, I really do like you,” Evan said, the words tumbling out fast. “I’ve liked you _like that_ for a while, I don’t know. I’m not the best with my feelings or anything but I couldn’t stop thinking that you’ve done so many nice things for me and were just kind of generally nice and I have the worst habit of idolizing people who do, like, one nice thing for me, so I thought maybe it was that, but I think it might just be you. Which is _so_ weird, I’m sorr-”

“Hey, Evan?”

“Yeah?”

“You’re making it weird.”

The smile on Connor’s face was inimitable. And they burst into the kind of laughter that can only break out of several months worth of tension. 

“Like seriously, though? Like, you’re not joking?” Connor asked, rubbing his wet eyes.

“Seriously,” Evan breathed. 

“So what the fuck do we do now?”

“Haven’t you done this before?”

“Nope, never.”

That shocked Evan a bit. He’d always thought Connor had been with at least one other person before. At least. Maybe it was just the air of something experienced that came with the long hair and sunken cheeks. “Neither have I.”

“Well,” Connor sighed, “leave it to the two worst people for this.”

“Don’t we, like… become boyfriends? Or something?”

“I mean, we could. We don’t have to either.” Connor raises his eyebrows at Evan. There’s a calmness to this that Connor didn’t expect. He could take everything, the whole nine yards of it all, but he’s giving this to the both of them. The route he wants to take ends in crashes and burns, something that comes from the deep-down yearning and the hope that Evan could fill the rotted out pits of his heart that Connor needed filled. _Gently, now. You need the ease in more than he does._

“That would be nice,” Evan said. “But not if you want to, then -”

“Works for me, we don’t have to do anything about it right now.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know, just… it’ll happen when, or if, it happens. No pressure. We can just hang out like normal.”

Connor’s words made the muscles in Evan’s hands relax so he could finally unfurl them. Another car passed by quickly, shaking them back and forth, reminding Evan that there were places to be, places they would be late and marked late, if they even showed up. The wave of anxiety gave him goosebumps. But Evan kind of didn’t want to show up. What was even the point anyway? Connor liked him. He liked him. He said so himself. There was something that could be gravely problematic to his grades if he thought like this but he couldn’t help but feel like there was nowhere else he’d rather be. This car had everything he needed in it, and at school he’d have to spend three-quarters of the day away from Connor. His mom was on a day shift, she’d miss the attendance call, and all Evan had to do was be back by seven. Easy peasy. 

Connor sighed, running his hands back over his face. “God, maybe I’ll be able to sleep tonight.”

“You weren’t sleeping because of this?” Evan exclaimed. “Like, because of me?”

“Of course not, I’m neurotic enough as it is, you just made it worse.”

The anxiety receptor’s in Evan’s brain didn’t quite know how to handle that information, tossing it around but ultimately throwing it away, he guessed. It dissolved. Connor should be sleeping more. He could only think of him. 

“Can - can we do something?” Evan asked, seeing the immediate panic spring in Connor’s eyes. “Like, not the two of us, but just something fun. I don’t feel like going to school.”

“Aren’t you gonna be worried about your mom?”

“Nope, we’re good.”

Connor smiled again. “Just think of what they’ll say: ‘ _Connor Murphy_ corrupted that good Jewish boy, Evan Hansen, now he _skips school_!’ Next thing you know you’ll be smoking _cigarettes_ and pounding beers like a proper high schooler.”

Evan laughed. “I think skipping school is enough for this year.”

“So you’ll drink next year?”

“Absolutely not.”

Connor, not even asking where Evan wanted to go, put the car into drive and pulled back into the road. And Evan, not being able to help himself even a little bit, plucked Connor’s free hand into his and gripped it over the centre console. 

Maybe Connor had corrupted him a little bit. Maybe he liked this freedom. Maybe he liked it.


	32. maybe it can be us, just maybe

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i think this was the first thing i wrote for this story
> 
> been holding on to this one for a while, bois

The thing about hanging out with Evan Hansen is that you start out not knowing anything about trees, and by the end, you also know nothing about trees, but you _do_ find out that you’re hopelessly in love with Evan Hansen.

And you’re in love with Evan’s voice and his mannerisms and his facts about trees and nature and the way he laughs sort of quietly like he doesn’t want you to hear and the way he rambles because even though that’s sort of a symptom of his disorder, it made him loveable and real. 

Everything about Evan was soft and perfect and real. 

“... and this is a Sycamore, now, these trees require a lot of water and space to grow so tall and big, so they don’t do well in highly populated areas of either trees or humans, meaning they have a large space around them in forests, mostly made up of underbrush like moss and bushes and shade-loving plants.”

Evan had been talking for almost thirty minutes straight, Connor had checked his watch. But they kept trekking through the forest, stopping every once and awhile to stare up at the expanse of a tree or its leaves or looking down to see what grew underneath it. 

Both of their shoes were so mucked up with dirt and fallen leaves, they’d spend the rest of the night scrubbing them before Cynthia let them inside for dinner. And it was so cold they could see their breath. Evan was so bundled up with his scarf and puffy jacket that Connor could have pinched his cheeks. Or kissed the breath out of his lungs. Either one works.

It was cold. And Connor, for the first time in a long time, was content. He could have stayed out there for hours and listened to Evan and not cared about what was going to happen to them or his family or his life. Things were infinite: time and space and love. 

There was this moment, frozen amongst all other moments in their lives, past and future, where this present moment existed. This moment where Connor’s breath hitched and he couldn’t take it anymore. Evan’s eyes were wide. The leaves stopped falling and the cold backed off, just for that moment. Just for that forever. The forever where Evan put his hands on Connor’s cold cheeks and pulled him down to meet his face, where Connor went with it. 

“Sorry, I’m such an awful person I should not have done that, I should not have put you in that situa-”

Connor shoved his lips onto Evan’s so fast that their teeth knocked and he winced before Evan returned the kiss, and Connor used his hands on Evan’s waist to bring him closer.

Kissing Evan felt like someone had flicked on the light again, even if just for a second. Connor could taste the brightness like the sunshine of the refrigerator bulb at midnight. The light, it was right there, it was always _right there_ , but he could reach it now and his hand burned with the newness of it all. 

He felt something. 

Connor hadn’t felt anything in years. 

He’d been angry or frustrated or upset or lonely or numb. But those weren’t feelings. Not like how kissing Evan was a feeling. 

It was tangible, sitting inside of him and fluttering up. It didn’t boil like the sourness of his anger that always sat within his chest. It was calming but exhilarating. A force that didn’t want to hurt anybody. It was refreshing for Connor. 

And Evan, oh, Evan knew that this had to be _it_ , right? Like kissing anyone else wasn’t going to feel this good. He couldn’t talk to people and he never wanted to be around them unless they were Connor. For the rest of his life. He could kiss Connor, no questions asked. He still worried about his hands and where they were and how fast he was breathing. Was he supposed to be breathing that fast? And he worried about people around them - would there be passers-by at this time of the year? He wasn’t sure. Didn’t seem likely, it was an awful day for a casual stroll, unless you were Evan and Connor. He didn’t worry about that anymore. He threw it away, it was ruining the moment.

It started to snow around them; Connor’s hair collected snowflakes and they landed on Evan’s lashes. 

Connor pulled away to see Evan’s blissful face, he’d never seen him so blatantly worry-free. No wrinkles in his forehead or scrunching of his eyebrows. For once he wasn’t folded in on himself. He looked freer. He felt freer. 

This new lightness made Connor giggle, which made Evan giggle, and soon they were just desperately holding onto each other in the middle of a forest while the snow packed in around them. It was going to be hell getting back home, but neither of them minded much. 

“C’mon,” Connor said, “we’ll freeze out here!”

Evan nodded while Connor let go of his waist, linking their hands together and leading him back to where they’d parked. But Evan pulled him back so Connor stood silently before him, shielded by the snow. He kissed him again. 

“Sorry, I just needed to… do that again,” Evan said. 

Connor looked up to the sky and laughed, getting snowflakes in his eyes. “That’s fine by me, but maybe wait until we’re in something with heating, then you can have me all you want, Hansen,” he said.

Which made Evan laugh too. And flush with embarrassment.

They didn’t drive home for another twenty minutes after they found the car. The shitty heaters in the car’s dashboard were enough to thaw them out. The radio was playing old-timey Christmas music. Evan couldn’t name the song, but he recognized it. Everything was hazy and new. They sat in the backseat until they’d had enough of each other and their lips were swollen and red-ringed and they were soaked wet by melted snow. 

Then Connor drove them back to his house, holding Evan’s hand on his knee.


End file.
